Happy New Year, fam!

🎄

I received a very positive response to my previous letter regarding the Bolide consumer app, including early traction and insights.

So, let's begin this year by evaluating December activities and key metrics that we believe are crucial for our success.

This time, my primary focus was on potential revenue and testing some user acquisition channels that had previously worked when we were building the web3 dApp.

Dec’23 Milestones

• Launched Apple Store In-App Event, notifications, and addressed minor bug fixes.

• Started developing smart account based on account abstraction concept. Applied protected RPC. Implemented initial Trust level scoring based on publicly available on-chain and off-chain data analytics.

• Began implementing the new design.

• Experimenting with distribution, including web3 quest platforms, NFTs, and Telegram promotions in three crypto-related channels.

Bolide app performance

Active Users

In December, we had 1,115 unique users, which accounts for 59% of the total active users, and 430 were completely new users. By the end of December 2023, we reached 2.47k TAU since the app's launch.

Acquisition channels

During December we tested distribution of our app through 3 crypto-related Telegram channels. Additionally, we created and conducted 3 quests: TaskOn, Intract, and Zealy, and launched a Christmas NFT collection to encourage the community to download the app and engage in swaps.

As a result, we spent $1,743, which can be broken down into $544 for Telegram promotion and $1,199 for the quests. This resulted in our user acquisition cost being $4 per new user and $1 per monthly active user.

The low performance of Telegram and Quests was primarily correlated with the iOS app. We also received a lot of feedback from the community about the lack of an Android app. But our target to develop a stable version of iOS with all key features and after we will start working on Android (to keep the burn rate low).

As for the Christmas NFT collection that we launched to support our active community members, we earned $314 from NFT minting actions without incurring any costs.

Next steps for user acquisition:

1. We will definitely postpone all quests until we have an Android version (except Layer3 since we’ve already planned it and it'll be free for us).

2. We’ll attempt targeting campaign on Telegram, focusing on Turkey, Arabic-speaking countries, India, and Europe.

3. We will conduct a deep dive into App Store Optimization (ASO) including localisation.

4. We will create short videos for TikTok and YouTube, as our competitors actively use these channels.

Revenue

All of our revenue is based on the prediction of a 1% fee from the value of swaps. We have chosen not to charge fees until we complete the development of our key features.

In December, we also included the revenue we received from NFT minting.

Team

To speed up the development process, we temporarily hired a second iOS developer for part-time work and also found an ASO expert who will provide consulting for the first steps.

For January, our primary focus is to complete the development of user onboarding, switch to the new design, and make the user experience as seamless as web2. In terms of the features, we want to introduce a ranking of crypto portfolio for customer trading.

We will also continue to explore distribution channels and in-app activities to engage and retain both current and new users. 🙂

If you have any questions, please reach out to me on Farcaster @oxb, Twitter @oxxbid, or email me at oxbid@bolide.fi.