April 22 2018

Bloom (Q1) Recap

Shannon Wu

Bloom’s mission is to build a robust global credit infrastructure on the blockchain. We are well on our way, with what has been a truly outstanding quarter — please reflect with us on the considerable progress made over the past few months.

We have made significant strides in our product and have hit some incredible milestones!

In this post, I share with you a recap of the past few months (in what we are roughly calling “Q1”). During this time, we:

Launched Phase 1, so users can create their BloomID, globally federated identity on the blockchain
Launched the Testnet release of the Phase 2 deployment
Introduced phone number attestations
Broke records on dapp and user growth
Had over 10,000 users create BloomIDs
Became a top 10 dapp by number of users
Conducted research for the Bloom Economic Research Division
Announced exciting partnerships with amazing companies
Introduced engaging initiatives for our passionate community
Held regular livestreams
Introduced and competed the Bloom Meme Contest
And more- keep reading!

Testnet Launch of Phase 2 Attestations

After more than 6 months of development, we are incredibly excited to announce the Testnet release of the Phase 2 deployment of Bloom. The data industry is an opaque black box. The credit bureaus and giant tech businesses make huge revenues off of owning your data, selling your data.

At Bloom, we give users the power to take back their data. We give users the power to own their own data, and decide how it’s used, how it’s sold.

Phase 2 sets the infrastructure for a decentralized attestation-based system that allows you to be in control of your own data. It’s the cornerstone for all future developments.

Phase 2 brings:

The first rollout of the Bloom attestation & identity platform, starting with phone attestation
Our first live attester and data partner integrations
Numerous user interface enhancements
Smart contract upgrades (support for multiple ETH addresses per user in the AccountRegistry)
Protocol level improvements in preparation for the Bloom mobile app release
Renewed interfaces that are friendly to both crypto newcomers and experts.

Voting in Polls

Members voted on key decisions including the mechanics of peer-to-peer staking and which languages to prioritize for translation.

You can now create a BloomID, cast your votes and help shape the evolution of the Bloom protocol and the global credit system.

Over 10,000 BloomIDs Created

Recently, we surpassed a huge milestone! Well over 10,000 users have created a BloomID.

We’re proud to share that with over 17,000 token holders, over 60% of our user base has interacted and used the product. This is a fantastic sign for user growth. We are continuously seeking feedback with the goal of building a better product.

Additionally, it’s exciting to share that Bloom is now a top 10 dapp by number of users. According to State of the Dapps, there are more than 1200 projects built on Ethereum. Dapps — short for ‘decentralized application’ — are applications running on Ethereum. Their site ranks smart contract based dapps on their user activity.

We have users and traffic from all over the world.

Research from the Bloom Economic Research Division (BERD)

BERD’s mission to open source our learnings, research and interviews to create a more inclusive, global, personal credit system. Over the past few months, we have been critically conducting research into the state of credit, and are now ready to start sharing the early findings in the form of interviews and reports.

To kick things off, we were excited to launch the new series Credit conversations. This new series “Credit Conversations” is more than numbers and data. We were on the ground interviewing people across the world, highlighting deeply personal stories that reflect a raw and holistic view of credit. This series features interviews with people on their diverse experiences and life journeys, raising awareness how credit impacts all of us.

Stay tuned for more research and interviews. Check out the first interview here: https://blog.hellobloom.io/credit-conversations-interview-with-a-professor-5009a42d6e8b

Partnerships

Bloom has a greater, global mission of providing the core infrastructure for decentralized credit. This will be a collective effort from many stakeholders who share the same mission of a better credit system. Among these stakeholders are lenders, identity attestors, data providers and more. Bloom protocol offers innovations for both traditional businesses as well as crypto and digital asset lenders. We are looking forward to building the future of credit with teams that share our mission of a better system.

Check out the newest partners below.

Blockfi

We are excited to announce Bloom’s partnership with BlockFi — a lender that provides USD loans to crypto owners. Their mission is to build diversified offerings for the blockchain asset sector and financial products that meet the needs of individuals and institutions that hold blockchain assets. BlockFi aims to provide liquidity by building products that provide flexible lending structures and the best borrowing rates for crypto asset holders.

SpringRole

SpringRole is a decentralized protocol for attestations of professional profiles.

The goal of SpringRole is to become the first professional reputation network to be built on the blockchain, eliminating fraud from user profiles and improving transparency. SpringRole data will be included into BloomID’s as part of our BloomIQ protocol. This means lenders, employers, and applications built on top of the Bloom Protocol will be able to access SpringRole attestations tied to a users BloomID.

Ripio Credit Network

RCN’s primary mission is to democratize the access to digital credit, starting in Latin America. As a network, users can access peer-to-peer lending services, regardless of where the lender and borrowers live, or the currency they use. They are leveraging BloomID and BloomIQ for companies providing services through RCN, which can improve enforceability and payback rate of loans by verifying a user’s identity and connecting their payback to a global reputation system.

In addition to these new partners, please check out more of our partners here: https://blog.hellobloom.io/bloom-partner-round-up-2c445d355ae0

Bloom in the News

There are big conversations happening now surrounding data privacy, security as seen through the Equifax hack, and the effects of centralization. Bloom is leading this by providing a new vision for the future of credit. See these important topics covered in Venture Beat, Forbes, Entrepreneur, and more.

Check out our press here: https://blog.hellobloom.io/bloom-in-the-news-1a8ab9340e35

Community Programming

We’re redefining the way credit and finance is conducted, paving the transition from a central corporate led system to a decentralized community led system. Part of this means we need a strong, engaged community.

We have been blown away by the ongoing support for Bloom. We’ve had thousands join our journey and we are extremely grateful for the overwhelming positivity from our community.

This past year, we launched The Bloom Community Alliance Program, which is committed to working closely with the community to building Bloom together. You can see the program in action through regular updates, community feedback on the product and partnerships, as well as our newly launched livestreams.

Livestreams

We started a regular livestream program to connect with our most passionate users who want the latest updates on Bloom. We aim to stream these every month and answer questions from the community. Immediately after each livestream, we hold a AMA for the community to engage and discuss.

Check out the recap for January and February.

Meme Contest

We had a little fun this quarter with a meme contest that rewarded users with BLT for top-quality memes. It was a fun way to help drive more awareness about Bloom, Bloom’s mission, and reach individuals who were new to the project. It was a pleasure to see community members get creative and show Bloom pride.

Here are all meme contest submissions in an album on Imgur.

Check out the winners: https://blog.hellobloom.io/announcing-meme-contest-winners-671c9984606e