Deep Dive: Grape Protocol
Grape protocol is the first Decentralized Social Network on Solana
The blockchain and crypto currency space has paved way for many who have taken advantage of the technology to create wealth and secure their money against the flaws of the traditional banking system and the financial economic crisis that occur regularly such as inflation.
However, the innovation of communication systems from mailboxes to telephone signals to social media has made communication more effective. Nevertheless, integrating the block chain technology to improve this innovation, is one of the most outstanding ways to advance communication systems.
This will also help in closing the loopholes of some typical social networking platforms. Stealing and selling users’ data and using them for unsolicited purposes are some of the flaws of these platforms and in my opinion, this ‘new innovation’ is needed to replace the old systems sooner than later.
These are three decentralized social networking platforms and a brief description of each:
— Diaspora: A decentralized messaging platform in which its servers are independently run and stores no user’s data.
— Minds: A platform that supports peer-to-peer advertising and helps its users to monetize its own content.
— Manyverse: A decentralized social media platform that stores data on its user’s device and its useable offline. Users’ data can be synchronized directly through Bluetooth.
Among the existing decentralized social networking platforms which are yet to be adopted by the majority, Grape Network is one of the decentralized social networking protocol which provides a toolset for building token-based membership communities in the Solana ecosystem.
GRAPE PROTOCOL COMMUNITY
I have been active in the Grape protocol discord community for months now and I must commend that growth of the community is astonishing. To be honest, this is the first crypto community project I check up on daily due to the standard of communication or activeness. Grape protocol discord community is an interesting place for any crypto enthusiast to be. The discord server is divided into different sections:
START HERE Section: This section has brief videos and articles that introduces and guides every new member to the Grape community and Solana ecosystem, has a step by step guide on how to be a verified member to be eligible to communicate with community members simply by linking one’s personal SPL supported wallet. After verifying your identity, it is important to introduce yourself in the #introduce-yourself section. Do well to check out for the recent announcements made on the server.
EVENTS Section: This section consist of the Grape and Solana events calendar showing the pasts and future events. AMAs are hosted and gaming events are streamed here.
MANAGEMENT Section: This section gives you a detailed description of various ways you can be of value to the community by consistently showing up your work in the #share-your-talent section and taking part in events to be awarded a skill role and/or some allocation of the $GRAPE tokens as the grape community is passionate about having ‘uncommonly skilled’ individuals in different sectors for the benefit of the enhancement of the project.
List of the skill roles. GRAPE ACCESS Section: After verifying your wallet, locate the #gate-access room and tap on the emojis of the tokens you have. Make sure you have the minimum hold on your verified SPL address. The selected gates will be open on the grape discord server. You will also see the price of all gate access tokens on the right hand side of the discord page.
DAO Section: This section is visible to all but only the DAO team will be able to communicate in that room. The visibility is put in place to encourage transparency so all community members are aware of all operations and decisions to be taken by the DAO team. All class A members are eligible for DAO application. Don’t panic. I outlined what it takes to belong to the different classes of individuals in the community below.
GRAPE Section: This section consists of #the-jungle where anyone can text, the different rooms for each individual ranking based on minimum $GRAPE holdings (Gibbon = 1000 $GRAPE, Great Ape = 5000 $GRAPE, Gorilla = 20000 $GRAPE) and rooms for music, sport, movies, gaming and an analysis channel where professionals analyze different projects and markets based on technical, fundamental and sentimental analysis.
Tapping on an individual on the Grape discord reveals the individual’s skill role(s), the class he belongs to and the various gates the individual has access to. GRAPE WORK Section: Grape Protocol gives room for project founders, experienced and knowledgeable block chain experts to bring up ideas that could be implemented for the benefit of both parties and the Solana ecosystem at large.
LANGUAGE Section: There are more than 15 different language groups presently available on the Grape discord server: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German and so on.
Join the Grape Protocol discord server by searching greatape on the Join Server on your discord or join directly with the invite link.
A good number of community members coupled with a decent amount of social media followings with interactions on its feed has been a criteria of a good project in some sense. However, each twitter post is being shared on the discord community for community members to engage and also retweet to catch the attention and attract other crypto enthusiast/OG to the project.
LINK TO TWITTER
GRAPE PROTOCOL WEBSITE
First impression? Absolutely outstanding. I don’t really think any researcher would visit the Grape protocol website and not want to dig deep to know more about the project. Asides the stunning interface, the website has all key details on the project which includes the documentation, tokenomics, roadmap, outlined features of the project and the app.
Besides, I used the archive website scanner to check for the history of the domain name. I haven’t seen any red flag(s) as there were two snapshots on 6th June. You can also check it here.
ROADMAP
From my observation, more than 80% of all Solana projects launched in 2021 have the almost the same roadmaps and its pathetic that most don’t even stick to the roadmaps they laid out. Grape protocol has something very distinct to offer and I haven’t noticed or seen their ‘style’ in any other crypto project.
All milestones for the months of July, August and September has been accomplished. The NFT marketplace was launched on the 24th September with a 4-hour limited sale with had a royalty of 10% and created by Grape, Pst and starflash.
Visit the grape NFT marketplace: https://nft.grapes.network/#/
The Calendar bot was an impressive update on August. With this feature, events don’t need to be bookmarked manually by the community members when there’s already an automated calendar anyone could check up on to get to know upcoming activities from time to time. By the end of the year, I believe we should see tremendous improvements in the projects after all pending milestones have been accomplished.
GRAPE PROTOCOL APP
The Grape protocol web app works mainly as a Solana DeFi dashboard for now. With time, there would be more additional features to spice up the web app but until that is done, Sonar and Apeboard (a cross chain DeFi dashboard)remains its closest competitors. Sonar has additional details to check the liquidity pools, yield farming, misc, lending/borrowing and leverage positions of an SPL address.
The supported wallets to access the Grape app includes phantom wallet, solflare and sollet web or the browser extension. You have an option to link your discord account to the app. Refer to the roadmap to know when the twitter integration will be accomplished so you can also link your twitter account.
GRAPE PROTOCOL WEB APP
TOKENOMICS
In simple terms, tokenomics which is coined from two words, ‘token’ and ‘economics’, is a way a coin/token creates and sustains its value on its chain or ecosystem. I am comfortable with the tokenomics of the project. Asides the distribution, the quality of Grape tokens would convince more investors to adopt it due to its wide utility such as communication, membership access and a lot of social events that would be coming up and also, its impact on the Solana ecosystem at large. In addition, the $GRAPE tokens are deflationary, meaning more tokens cannot be issued or minted.
TEAM
The team members are not anonymous. Most or all team members have a social handle account especially on twitter and all can be reached out to at any point in time. Also, team members are not just experienced crypto OGs but they’re also good long term strategist. I have attended several Public team talks on the Grape discord and they’re making plans in several years to come.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Grape protocol is one of the rare dynamic projects out there in the block chain and crypto space at large looking forward to integrate uncommon systems. Though the project is still very early, it has already made massive impact on the Solana ecosystem for now and I like the fact that all the present products they have work hand in hand.
A well structured community is not easy to find due to the fact that most community moderators find it hard to organize and coordinate the affairs of the community members and also set standard for them to follow.
The Grape community is structured in such a way to bring newbies closer to the experienced ones which would help learning fast and efficient, directly by reaching out to ask questions or indirectly by close observation of how things are being done.
As far as I will still remain in the crypto space, Grape protocol will always be a project on my watchlist and as they keep up the energy and strategy, they’ll definitely be one of the big players in the crypto space at large.
EXTRA RESOURCES
GRAPE PROTOCOL DOCUMENTATION — LINK
GRAPE LITEPAPER — LINK
COINGECKO — LINK
MEDIUM — LINK
EXPLORER — LINK
GITHUB REPOSITORY — LINK