Dear Community,
Good morning/afternoon/evening, depending on where you are in the world.
We’d like to share some good news with you all to hopefully brighten up your day.
Overview
Our paramount objective is to maintain the highest level of transparency in our operations. As such, we are dedicated to keeping you informed of our ongoing targets and the team responsible for their execution. Over the past quarter, we have been exerting considerable effort toward the development of our mobile application, a new dashboard, an explorer, an internal DEX, a staking platform, and the integration of various LoRa gateways. The ultimate goal of Crankk is to become a widely accessible and predominantly open-source project, which we believe, will significantly enhance the robustness and reliability of our platform. We are optimistic that our endeavors will be met with success, and all users will benefit greatly from Crankk features and services.
Q1 2023
Team
CEO / alviso#3187 — Peter started Crankk 8 months ago by developing and releasing the most important features that enabled a LoRaWAN network participation based crypto network to get on its feet. He’ll remain the primary driving force behind the project making the most important decisions but a growing and productive team will enable him to offload some of his over encompassing responsibilities to other members of the team.
COO / MilenMinev#8498 — He is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations and management of the project. This includes coordinating and implementing the strategic plans and goals set by the CEO, managing the project budget and resources, and overseeing the development and implementation of policies and procedures to support the project. He also manages the project team, including hiring, training, and evaluating team members. His main goal is to ensure that the Crankk project is delivered on time and in top quality.
CTO / shoyl#8187 — He works closely with the project team to ensure the technical requirements are met, and the project is delivered on time and within budget. The CTO stays current with new technologies and trends in the IoT field and makes recommendations for the integration of new technologies into the project. He aligned the technical aspects of the project with the overall goals and objectives of the organization. Overall, the CTO ensures the Crankk project is technically sound and meets the needs of the team.
DEV / chokybp#5822 — He is mainly responsible for creating the user interface and user experience (UI/UX) using various frontend technologies such as HTML5, SASS, JavaScript, Vue.js. As a full stack developer he works closely with the team to ensure the backend supports the UI and to align the UX with the Crankk goals.
Technical Support Team / xDpRx#5807 / Conomen#6156 / Artex#5026 — As a Technical Support in Crankk the team will be responsible for providing technical assistance to customers and troubleshooting. They work closely with the development team to report and resolve any technical issues that arise during the deployment and operation of the Crankk gateways. The team also creates and maintains documentation and training materials to help users understand and manage their devices, identify and resolve bugs, and provide feedback to the development team to improve the network. They will be responsible for monitoring performance, identifying potential issues, maintaining and updating the knowledge base and providing customer service. Also ensure that the system is functioning properly, users have a positive experience with the project and resolve any issue in a timely and efficient manner.
Community Mod / Megnito#5186 — As a Community Moderator in Crankk he is responsible for managing and moderating the online community of Crankk users. He monitors online conversations, responds to user inquiries and feedback, and enforces community guidelines and rules. He identifies and addresses any issues or concerns that arise within the community, creates and curates content, organizes and promotes community events and activities, and uses analytic tools and metrics to measure the engagement and growth of the community.
Beta Group
Over the past several months we’ve received an enormous amount of questions and queries regarding the ability to repurpose existing LoRa gateways to Crankk. While we view ourselves as an independent project progressing on our unique path, one cannot deny that repurposing existing gateway hardware can make sense for those that already own them and choose to repurpose them.
Therefore, we invite you to participate in our Beta Group by acquiring a software license, allowing your existing gateway to be fully integrated into our project. Software license price will be $150 (We reserve the right to adjust based on demand. There will also be an affiliate program which provides a discount.). Please note that there will be a CRKK token staking requirement to operate a node for mining valued at 100$.
The Beta Group will start receiving licenses in March featuring a total of 2,000 devices from the following vendors / brands / models:
SensCap M1, Pisces P100, Heltec, COTX X1/X3, RAK V2, MNTD, Panther X1/X2, Dragino LPS8, Controllino V1, Milesight UG65, Browan MerryIoT, Nebra OG and Nebra Rock Pi
Tokenomics reward structure
We feel that our tokenomics reward structure is due for an update. While none of the fundamentals regarding the Crankk Token can change, we feel that the reward structure should. Given the unique nature of Kadena’s 20 chains, it’s not an easy challenge to come up with a plan that can accommodate various scenarios and rewards early adopters more but carries on to be lucrative for the ones that come later. We have great and unique plans for the community’s review and vote but aren’t quite ready yet. We see it as one of the highest priority items so expect us to communicate about it soon.
Server / infrastructure scaling
We have begun the effort of lateral / geographical scaling of our server infrastructure. With the introduction of the Beta Group, we’ll include direct blockchain connectivity for the devices, lessening the need for server resources. At the same time, the nature of LoRaWAN and Chirpstack requires us to maintain and scale a considerable server infrastructure, not to mention the server requirements for the mobile app. Our strategy is two-pronged. Scale laterally for the expected higher load and higher number of connected devices and at the same time introduce geographical load balancing enabling end-devices to connect to the nearest server resources.
DEX
An internal DEX (Decentralized Exchange) in Crankk is a decentralized exchange platform built and maintained by the Crankk team within the ecosystem of Kadena blockchain network. It allows users to trade $CRKK tokens securely, privately and faster, as it eliminates the need to move assets to and from other blockchains and exchanges. In the future we may implement a governance mechanism where the community will be able to vote on rules and parameters such as trading fees and token listing. It’s a valuable service that can provide a secure and self-governed way of trading assets and can be a key feature for the long-term success of Crankk.
Staking
We are pleased to introduce the Staking mechanism as a final step in the onboarding process. Every gateway will require a fixed amount of tokens or value to be staked in order to function as a Proof-of-Network-Participation node or Consensus node. Subsequently, staking is expected to not only result in token deflation and project reliability, but would also serve as the initial step for participation in the future governance mechanism.
Mobile App
One of the key features of the app is the ability to automate the process of onboarding new hotspots onto the Kadena blockchain. This will make it easier to start mining Crankk without any technical expertise.
Another important feature is the ability to create and manage wallets, as well as transfer Kadena and Crankk token between wallets.
In addition, there will be an extensive dashboard showing hotspots’ recent activity and rewards. Also, the explorer map will be integrated into the mobile app as well. This will give users a better understanding of their devices’ performance and how they are being used.
Last but not least, the app will also allow users to connect their hotspot to a Wifi network.
New Dashboard
Completely rewritten from the ground up. Mobile ready design, light and dark mode, easier to work with many gateways, more detailed information about the gateways, activity and wallets. More statistics about the gateways, activity, rewards and wallets. Ability to show statistics for different periods of time, ability to to search, filter and export getaways, activity and wallets. DEX and staking will also be accessible through the new dashboard.
Explorer
Interactive map visualizing gateway locations as a heatmap. It will allow us to visualize both gateway density as well as the relative differences between locations based on gateway properties. Statistics about the number of gateways, online/offline gateways, manufacturers, countries, rewards. It will feature the ability to search for a gateway by name and see the recent activity for a selected gateway.
Q2 2023
Dev Diary
Production diary is a document that chronicles the development process of a Crankk. It will include information about the project’s goals, technical challenges, and progress updates. Dev diaries can be written by individuals or teams and are often shared with the public to provide transparency and insight into the development process. Also it’s a great way for developers to keep track of the progress of their project.
Gamification
Strategic attempt to enhance Crankk Network by creating similar experiences to those when playing games in order to motivate and engage users.
Onboarding
Open Crankk Network for mass onboarding. The onboarding process will be much more automated than it is now. Miner images will work together with the mobile app to seamlessly onboard new miners.
Sensors
Add sensors to the network. Some Dragino LoRa sensors like temperature, humidity, door open, water leak have already been integrated to Crankk. You’ll be able to see data from your sensors integrated into the Crankk dashboard. Onboarding new sensors to your dashboard will be supported thru the mobile app as well.
Ranking System
Activate Crankk’s ranking system. Crankk will not have a deny list, nor an algorithm that disqualifies hotspots for reasons that are hard to understand by the owner. Instead, it uses a simple ranking system that rewards devices that deliver unique LoRa packets and contribute the most to the actual coverage.
More hardware options
We’ll continue to work with manufacturers / distributors to bring a greater selection of miner options available for purchase.
Rewards Boost
By adding your sensors to our network, you will be granted up to 3% more mining benefits paid out from our Marketing pool. In order to reach this 3%, you will need to add at least 5 sensors. Also, if you add a GPS antenna to your miner, your earnings will improve by 1%.
Q3 2023
- Add a White Paper
- Add Power Bar — Part of gamification
- Add DIY hotspots for onboarding
- Add more LoRa Gateways for onboarding
- Oracle Nodes
Q4 2023
- BLE/BLZ Nodes
- Wi-Fi Nodes
- External Audit
- Listing on CEX
This announcement contains forward looking statements that are subject to change.
Much love,
Crankk Team
