[Top Builder 2025]: plunda

[jowo-io]

🏗️ Top Builder 2025 Application Form to track progress through Round 1 - 3 ~ Currently in Round 1

📝 Instructions

Welcome to the Top Builder competition! Before you begin, here’s what you need to know:

1. Eligibility: Only teams that have been officially selected for Top Builder by PlebLab are eligible to use this form.
2. Detailed Submissions: Provide comprehensive information to assist the judges in evaluating your project effectively.
3. Submission Deadlines: Adhere to submission deadlines for each round to remain in good standing.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Team

• Team Name: plunda
• Number of Founders: 1
• Team Background: I’ve worked at various startups and within larger product development teams. I’ve spent several years contracting; shipping code and solving problems under tight deadlines. I’ve also conceived countless side projects, large and small.
• Bitcoin & Lightning Involvement: For the last few years I've been working on Bitcoin FOSS, some contracting for Bitcoin companies, as well as participating in the previous Top Builder with a different project.
• Origin Story: I'm fascinated by virtual economies and so I am going to build one. My aim is essentially to unchain the physical collectibles market from meat space. To make collectibles easy to trade, swap, buy and sell. Globally, digitally, instantly with tiny fees.

💡 The Idea

• Project Overview:
• Website: https://plunda.co
• GitHub:
• Project Stage: MVP is built, now it's time to iterate and find users / PMF
• Supplementary Materials: Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E2KCgbAmRE

📚 Additional Information

• Additional Links/Info: Pitch deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VIdNb0y2WjzACAnojJL0ykQ8bWqtLW6GawUqIzogmYI

📌 Submission Type

• Initial Project Creation

🚀 Current Project Progress

• Progress Made: Built the MVP
• Challenges Faced: So far the challenges have been largely technical: designing app structure and database models, configuring real-time data with websockets, configuring the app as a PWA, wiring up deployment pipeline, etc
• Future Roadmap of what's next: Next will be a big shift from technical to user focused. I'll be spending most of my time talking with users and trying to find my early adopters. This will be a steep learning curve.

⏳ Round 1 Milestone

• Keep in mind that completion will need to be by February 8th, 2025.
• First-round milestone the team has set for themselves:

• 25 daily active users
• speak to users to learn and guide product roadmap
• improve the social features in the app, this will potentially include:
  • refactoring the chat UI
  • building private messaging
  • reply to message feature
  • quote message feature
  • notifications for chat
• improve the trade experience - not sure yet how this'll be accomplished. will talk to users on this.

📝 Submission Complete

• All required information has been provided above.

📅 Top Builder Program Structure

Registration Opens: Monday, October 28th, 2024

• Application: Interested teams apply for Top Builder.
• Selection: Teams will be chosen based on their application. See FAQ for details.

Round 1: January 6th - February 8th, 2025

• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops start, available live and online.
• Chat Access: Selected teams join the PlebLab internal chat.
• Mentorship: Begins for teams.
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their first-round milestones.

Round 2: February 9 - 22nd, 2025

• Team Reduction: PlebLab cuts half of the Top Builder teams. (Only half continued in Round 2.)
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their second-round milestones.
• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops continue.
• Mentorship: Continues.

Round 3: Starting February 23rd, 2025

• Team Reduction: PlebLab narrows down to 5 Top Builder teams. (All will be pitching in Austin.)
• Final Milestones: Teams set final project milestones for the last round.
• Preparation: Teams prepare their pitch in front of judges. Final teams are contacted to come to Austin for Startup Day.

Final Round at Startup Day: March 13, 2025

• Preparation: Teams work on their final pitches at PlebLab.
• Presentations: Final teams present before judges on Startup Day.
• Deliberation: Judges decide during a happy hour.
• Announcement: The winner of Top Builder is announced at Austin BitDevs.
• Celebration: After-party for Top Builder.

[jowo-io]

posted on SN: https://stacker.news/items/795930

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plunda.co is a bitcoin powered collectibles exchange. buy, sell & swap collectibles digitally, take physical custody when you're ready

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E2KCgbAmRE

idea

i've been playing with the idea of building a peer-2-peer digital marketplace for a while now, my fascination with these type of digital economies comes from playing games as a kid, specifically RuneScape - a mmorpg with a large in-game economy.

how it works

all the collectibles are stored at plunda HQ securely, plunda photographs and then lists the collectibles on the app which makes them available for user to buy. once bought, they'll live in the user's "bank". the user can then exchange the collectible with other users, or take physical custody.

down the line, users will be able to deposit their own collectibles into their digital bank by shipping them to plunda HQ for processing. for now however, all the collectibles are supplied to plunda by trusted coin dealers.

rationale

the idea behind plunda.co is to bring a much higher level of liquidity into the collector marketplace. if you're a coin collector in meat-space you'll often times pay near 50% transaction fee on a purchase or sale, especially on lower value items. for example, if you buy a $5 coin on ebay, you'd be lucky to get $2.50 back when you sell it - after all the fees and expenses.

collectibles are stuck in meat-space, they're boxed in and weighed down by the fact that they are physical. they're getting left behind in the internet era. with plunda, collectibles could flow like water at the speed of light. easy to trade, swap, buy and sell. globally, digitally, instantly with tiny fees.

as well as improving liquidity and lowering transaction cost and friction, plunda also aims to offer many other benefits such as: authenticity guarantee, insurance, social features and insights into your collection.

we also see an aging collector landscape, it's my hope that plunda can inspire a younger generation and introduce them to collecting. millennials and the younger generations are tech-savy and excited by gamified products, especially when they can earn some cash. i'm excited to see what i can build!

early access

for plunda's initial release it will inherently have a niche audience. i'm looking for those select few bitcoiners who also happen to be coin collectors.

if you are such a rare breed, please get in touch, you're my perfect early adopter! i'd love to hear your thoughts, and get you signed up (you'll need an access code to get your account approved)

you can find my email on the plunda.co homepage or simply post here on SN.

down the line once the product has been honed, built out, battle tested and there's a robust legal framework in place - i'm keen to expand the app into the fiat world as well as other collectible asset types and bring the product to as many people as possible.

top builder

we'll be competing in this year's Top Builder by PlebLab! excited to see what happens.

Roadmap

there's a ton of features i'd like to build - but first - i need to find my early adopters and through them attempt to answer some fundamental question:

• is there potential to create a virtual economy around custodial collectibles?
• do people even want something like this?
• do people enjoy using it?
• do i need to branch out away from coins and into more relevant collectibles, e.g. Pokemon cards or NFTs?

once the fundamentals have been established, i've got a long list of features to build - most likely the list will change on-the-fly as I learn more about how people use the app, but here it is as things stands:

• social features, like private chat, online status,
• more marketplace features
• security - trading password, 2fa
• additional PWA features
• improve notifications - add email notifications & granular push notifications
• admin features for moderating, management, editing etc
• design and UX improvements
• enabling lightning withdrawals
• building currency sell, deposit and withdrawal features
• fiat integration
• build a system that allows users to deposit their own collectibles by sending them to plunda HQ
• improve on UI and admin features to prevent scammers using the app
• advanced sort, search and filtering
• support and marketing pages

feedback

reply here on SN with any feedback, ideas, or questions.

notes

davidw has written a fantastic post you should read: https://stacker.news/items/495408
do collectibles have a future? and could plunda be part of that story?