The Launch

In February, I posted about a tool I was working on, to help compare market caps and put coins in perspective. The post blew up. Within the first 2 days (and driven entirely by that launch post), the website received 100,000 page views. I call it the Reddit Hug of Love. I want to thank all of you who were part of that launch post...the positive comments in that thread are the only fuel I'll ever need to keep me going to improve the site for the crypto community.

As an aside, the sudden popularity of the site had two effects on me:

• Pride: it was amazing to see people using and sharing something I created. I was over the moon and couldn't concentrate on anything else.
• Anxiety: something not a lot of people talk about when they go "viral". I quickly realized it's actually very stressful to have a sudden wave of attention. Over the first couple days I monitored the comments obsessively: every positive comment was a dopamine hit, every criticism hit like a slap and every feature suggestion created in me a feeling of responsibility that I needed to make right before I could concentrate on anything else. I stayed up late into the night for several days and implemented every single suggestion I had the technical means to, and followed up with a reply to whoever suggested it.

While I was implementing requests as fast as I could, I felt I wasn't doing the community justice with that amateurish UI and architecture. Out of the blue, a couple days later, I got a DM.

The Re-Design & V2

A couple days after the launch, a redditor by the username /u/hubbeman reached out, offering to help me redesign the site's UI, as a side project. We met on Zoom a couple times and we ended up having several design sessions on Figma which I then took and implemented on my own. As of last month, that design is live :)

The new V2 redesign features a new logo, a new layout, and a more modern aesthetic. I took the opportunity to re-write the frontend framework (I switched from Vue to Svelte, for those curious). The backend of V1 was also quite rickety, and only supported the top 1000 coins. To prevent overloading my server, I had to cache information for 3 hours, leading to outdated prices, especially during very volatile days. The new site is directly linked to CoinGecko, and supports all coins listed (8000+), and pulls the latest price every time.

I've also added several new features:

• Portfolio: allows you to keep track of your coins and progress towards your price targets.
• Learning center: I've started to add knowledge articles so that newcomers to the crypto world can learn important concepts and navigate the site more effectively.
• Charts! As of last week, I finished designing and building historical price and volume charts, as well as total combined portfolio worth charts. They are completely interactive on desktop and mobile.

What's Next

Given how crucial you all were in making The Coin Perspective something more than a weekend project, I feel like you deserve a "Shareholder update", despite there being no shares, and the site not really generating any revenue (aside from ~$70 in generous donations and some affiliate links which in 5 months have generated ~$100... all of which is going straight to domain/hosting costs!).

Here's what I have planned for the next 12 months:

Roadmap for V3 (ETA 3-6 months)

• Create a backend to be independent: as great as CoinGecko is, I feel I am a little too reliant on their awesome service at the moment. First of all, if CoinGecko decides to change their API or usage terms, it could create downtimes making me scramble for alternatives. I've decided I'll invest time and money in creating my own backend, and slowly ease off of CoinGecko. Second, it'll allow me to add additional data that CoinGecko may not offer. Thirdly, having a custom backend allows me to make technical enhancements such as page pre-rendering, which means faster load times and performance.
• Add new "perspectives": the whole point of The Coin Perspective is to put coins in perspective. So far, it's good at putting price and market cap in perspective, but there's a whole lot more that can be done! I have a lot of ideas I want to pursue (e.g. putting time in perspective, putting cost of living in perspective, account for staking/burning/etc). If you have ideas, please add them here.

Roadmap for V4 (ETA: 6-12 months)

• Create an objective content platform: crypto has a content problem...posts riddled with inaccuracies, auto-generated articles, pump and dumps and just outright scams, I feel like high quality content is hard to find. I want to do something about it. I'm still in the scoping phase, but if you have ideas or want to contribute, let me know. The underlying goal is: offer high quality objective perspectives and insights, without any hidden agenda. I know -- it's harder than it sounds -- but I'm excited to give it a try.
• Explore monetization opportunities: it would be cool to self-sustain development on the site, but I want to be VERY careful with that, as I don't want to sacrifice the customer experience. I hate banners, I hate scams, and crypto has enough trust issues as it is. I'll only consider opportunities that have zero impact on the usability of the site. Currently I'm experimenting with affiliate links (the "Recommended exchanges" section), but it's not really generating anything, and is taking up too much real-estate, so I might remove/change it soon. If you have ideas, let me know.

Thanks for reading, for your support and your love. Happy research!