Flits Q4 Report

Introduction/recap:

First, we would like to thank all our Flits users and investors who have been helping us build this project from the ground up. It has been a great and unique experience thus far, and we have come far in these last two years. But with Flits growing in every aspect of the project, we will have to start making some drastic changes to the organization and the way this project is structured.  In this update, we would like to share with everyone our approach to make Flits an even more global project with better structure and scalability stability. This also includes expanding the team and making sure more information is being shared with our community. We know that our communication has not always been up to the desired standards, but what I can say it is because we have been working very hard on scaling and improving this project, making it ready to handle more users, more nodes and create a better cohesive crypto ecosystem within your phone. Most of these improvements took a lot of time to work out, test, and prepare for implementation. Together with the fact that Flits still consists of a very small team, means some things were not prioritized correctly.

From the start of this project and the release of the app, Flits has always been centered around Masternode hosting, with different other features being implemented over time. This has been working for us for the last two years, but with increasing demand and expansion of the crypto ecosystem in general, we believe Flits as a non-custodial wallet has to offer more than just Masternode hosting. With the current app, things have been added, but the fundamentals of the app have never been changed to provide a better and more future-proof basis to build from. Therefore, we have dedicated our time the last 6-8 months rebuilding the core and purpose of the Flits app, so the whole project can scale with the current (and future) demand. With the modular design of the new app structure, it will be much easier to plug in other parties and developers to help improve the app and create a better and more cohesive app for our users. Also, it will be easier for us to implement new features, introduce interesting partnerships inside the app and build an overall better user experience.

Server structure changes:

As mentioned previously, Masternode hosting has been the beating heart of this project since the beginning, and we are constantly searching for ways to improve this and offer a better and faster service. The last couple of months, we have been struggling with our current service providers and partners, as they have been increasingly difficult to reach and their service has not been up to the desired standard we have gotten used to. Therefore, we have made the choice to completely change our server structure and look into other parties and ways of improving our services, without the users experiencing any difficulties. We are happy to announce we have been able to build something new that will be faster, better and eliminates a lot of issues the old structure had. Server deployment should go automatically and without unforeseeable problems, users will no longer have to wait days before new servers will be online to deploy nodes. We believe this is a huge improvement and will also greatly benefit the schedule and planning of the current tech team.  

With these changes made to the back-end and server structure, users can expect that our old/current servers will slowly be phased out. That said, some of the current servers will be taken offline as soon as the new system is up, as their performance is far below the performance of comparable servers within our current system and resulting in a bad user experience and requiring a lot of attention from the team.  For the rest of our servers, we will do this gradually and trying to keep the impact for our users as low as possible. Users will still be confronted with nodes being migrated and needing to be restarted. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about this but in the long run, this is going to provide more stability.

One of our most impactful changes that come with the new server structure is the fact that we are struggling to provide enough IPs for master nodes that require IPv4. As many of you may know, there is a general scarcity of IP addresses, especially IPv4. With our current system, we were able to get these IPs fairly easily and for a very competitive price. Unfortunately, although we have provided documentation of our operation about why we require these IP addresses, our current provider has chosen to not provide any more of these IPs until we have been reviewed. As for now, we are already 3 months into this process, and we still have not received an update from this party. We were able to find a temporary solution by optimizing our current server structure, but this is not enough to keep up with the demand and results in delayed setup times. While we knew this was eventually going to happen, we also found another supplier that will be able to help us out as a backup. With the implementation of the new server structure mentioned before, we will also be implementing this supplier as well. The only downside is that this means hosting masternodes within the Flits app that require IPv4 will become more expensive, simply due to the fact IPv4 is more expensive with this new system. Of course, will this also mean, there will be no more shortages, delays, and waiting times, making the whole experience for our users better and more convenient.

Team:

As some may already have noticed in Discord, we have been expanding the Flits team over the last couple of months. Unfortunately, we have also seen some of our team members leaving us, to explore new opportunities. We of course wish them all the best with their search and hope they will find something that fits them.

Although new people joining the team, Flits is still a big operation run by just a small group of very enthusiastic and committed people. Meaning, things are not developing as quickly as we would sometimes like to see. As for now, the Flits team exists of 7 people, including Mitchel and myself. We run every aspect of this organization, from technical maintenance to support and communication. We would like to thank our community and investors for being patient with us and seeing through the sometimes lacking communication from us to them. Furthermore, we also would like to take this opportunity to properly introduce the Flits team as it is constructed right now:

Mitchel & Konrad – Founders and owners

Taking care of daily management, app development, support, and trying to create the best experience possible.

James – Sr. Developer

Being the second man in charge when it comes to technical development, James is a great developer with a healthy temperament. Always ready to help and assist, James is the man Flits counts on when it comes to optimizing and building the backend of this great project.

Luis – Support Manager

Being involved with Flits from the moment this project was born, Luis has been no stranger to Flits. Although he lost touch with the project for a short period, he has found his way back and has been helping to shape the project ever since. With his great communication skills, he has grown within the project and with his network, he has been helping to find inspiration to do better every time.

Luke – Jr. Developer

Luke is a hardworking and dependable force within the Flits team. Every task you throw at him, he is able to manage and complete, most of the time in a very short timeframe. Within Flits, he is picking up his development skills and working on fixing technical issues.

Daniel – Jr. Developer/ Designer

Flits latest addition to the team is Daniel! He is a driven young developer always looking for ways to improve the project in every aspect he can think of. He likes to be involved and is full of good ideas to help Flits grow and improve. His current role within the team can be sometimes unclear as he is doing different things at a time, from front-end development to helping with support-related issues.

Ayuba – Support agent

Helping users comes naturally to Ayuba, and he is always looking for ways to take care of the Flits users who have questions or problems. His politeness and patience make him a great addition to the Flits team.

We are very proud to have these guys on board and appreciate everything they do to help Flits grown. We know it can be frustrating from time to time, but these guys are the ones who make it happen behind the screens!

Flits V5.0:

The long-anticipated version 5.0 of the Flits app is still in development at this moment in time. The aim to have this update live in October has been too ambitious and based on the topics previously mentioned, more urgent developments have scrambled the timeline for the release of the new app update. We are sure the release of the new app will be happening at least this year. The current idea is to release the new app with the most important improvements relative to the current version of the app. From there, we are planning on adding stability updates and more features in smaller updates following the initial release of the app. This way we are able to test features better and bring improvements directly to the users.

To give our users a better idea of the new app and upcoming features, we are very thrilled to share some written insight about what will be improved and what can be expected for the new update.  Flits V5.0 will be designed and built with scalability in mind. With the current version of the app, we have been layering and forcing new features inside the app, but this had its limits design-wise. The current app has never been designed with the idea in mind to incorporate third parties, add new features, etc. Therefore, we took the app back to the drawing board and came up with a whole new UI and UX for our users. This new design is fully focused on the convenience for users, control, and scalability of the Flits ecosystem. At this point we still considered the app to be an MVP (minimal valuable product), we were not able to scale at the desired pace mostly because of design restrictions and just not be able to find the right persons to help grow the project. This is also the reason we decided to keep off big marketing releases and partnerships, as we only have one shot to launch this project, and we want it to be good. We are confident that the new app is going to change the game for Flits, the app will be better in every aspect from design to functionality and features.

We also took the time to search for new partners who were able to enrich the Flits ecosystem and could help with marketing activities when the new app will be launched. This may come as a minor disappointment, but we are not able to share these parties for now, as we are still discussing possibilities. What we can share is that we are talking about working with big projects and market leaders, and most of these collaborations are already in an advanced stage. But until the moment everything is 100% agreed upon, we are not going to make false promises.

What follows will be a swift overview of features that can be expected when the new Flits app is hitting the market:

1. Holding NFT’s inside the Flits app
2. New masternode system with more information
3. Improved UI and UX
4. Buying and selling crypto directly inside the app
5. Adding credit card and FIAT options for buying credits for Masternode hosting
6. Improved mining section providing more information and reward statuses
7. Improved server structure and deployment times
8. More elaborate information inside the app, making it more clear for users how things work
9. Improved notifications and service announcements
10. Integration of Defi inside the app
11. Improved explore tab
12. Improved in-app feedback to the users
13. Tax. administration

With V5.0 successfully launched we will immediately start working on the re-launch of the Flits website and Flits Desktop extension. The idea is to take the next 6 months to successfully release the whole Flits ecosystem with all features up and running as initially intended. We aim to make this update the last large change design-wise and push the app to a broader audience from there.

Flits Defi:

Although the new app update is being the first priority at this moment, we are still working on the Flits Defi token. Right now, we are working with the team to explore different chains and see what would fit our concept the best. Because we are focussing with all our assets on stability and service optimization, the Flits token development will be delayed till after the new app update is live. We will share more information as soon as we have any available, but we are not going to share data that is not set. This will only result in speculation.

Vision 2022:

With everything coming together in the next six months we hope to have the project up and running as intended. With Flits being a cohesive ecosystem that brings control back to the users and investors. Our goal is to keep building and introducing new partners, projects, and features to this ecosystem. We believe that if we create a gateway, bringing supply and demand together we are able to reach a lot of new people within the crypto space. By working together with established projects and organizations we think we can eventually create an Amazon-like concept, where we are able to offer numerous services and features, provided by the best, in one ecosystem. This may sound ambitious, but we are confident this is something we are able to accomplish, especially as the last couple of months have shown that Flits is able to attract not only investors but also organizations who truly believe Flits can be an asset for their growth.

With this concept in place, Flits will shift from a service provider to an overarching organization taking care of marketing, support, and legal administration to provide worry-free services to users while working together with the best in the market. To take this even a step further, the new app will also be built to support direct API access to other developers and projects to contribute to this idea. Making it easier to introduce and scale with new features and services.

We hope we have informed you well, and want to urge that we appreciate everyone who has been helping us to build and grow Flits. Without your trust in us, we would never have been able to come so far, so thank you for that!