*Disclaimer - Some products & services mentioned in this blog are discontinued or deprecated; check out our ecosystem for current alternatives and documentation for the latest developer guides.

Greetings! It has been some time since our last blog, and I am really excited to share the updates we made over the previous several months within the RSS3 ecosystem. We started RSS3 last year, and with all the dedication and hard work of all the stakeholders, we are now officially at the second stage of RSS3.

From Testnet 0.4 [PreNode] to Testnet 0.9 [PreGod] and Crossbell

We started RSS3 with an elementary logic: What if we delivered all that RSS3 has to offer in the easiest and fastest way possible and see if it provides value to the world? That was why the first version of the RSS3 network was built in NodeJS, and of course, there is a pun here since it is something we use before the actual nodes. To our surprise, the RSS3 PreNode was very popular. It gathered tractions not only from our apps like Cheers (formerly Web3 Pass) and Revery but also lots of third-party applications. PreNode was serving up to 70 thousand users by this February when we started to migrate to PreGod. Still, it had intrinsic issues that challenged the system from scaling up and providing a better experience:

• It lacked support for non-registered users. However, if RSS3 wants to disseminate all the information from Web3, it should include all that exists in the decentralized world.
• It relies purely on centralized platforms for Web2 content. This only works if we do not scale and these platforms keep being “mercy.”
• It relies too much on third-party providers, which causes instabilities.
• It simply wasn’t fast enough.

With these challenges, we started working on PreGod and Crossbell. And until today, we are excited to say that all apps within the RSS3 ecosystem have migrated onto the new architecture. PreGod has just released its version 1.1 and now serves around 100 million monthly requests. It will continuously evolve toward the scope, depth, security, and clarity of all that is essential for information dissemination, including feed, search, and all yet to come. Crossbell, which will serve as a bridge for Web2 information to exist in Web3, will also empower the whole Web3 ecosystem.

From Cheers and Revery to rss3.io

Cheers and Revery were all started as developer demos for us to showcase what RSS3 was able to do. We began with Cheers when we first started supporting indexing data from different networks. It was first named The Web3 Pass at the time and was the first cross-platform profile dApp for Web3. It was fascinating to see the enormous passion from the community, and it went on to gather more developers interested in RSS3 and, later on, more Web3 dApps natively built with profiles. Not too long after, when the RSS3 prenode was able to power the first aggregated feed of Web3, we released the second developer demo, Revery, to showcase that it is possible to build out social media with activities from different decentralized networks. Along the way, RSS3 has always been the trailblazer for innovations in how users consume and interact with data from decentralized networks. And we will keep innovating.

We have received lots of feedback from the community, suggesting that we should not only treat Cheers and Revery as engineering demos but as consumer applications that constantly evolve. And also, we often get responses saying that the idea of RSS3, either “the feed of Web3” or “information dissemination”, is way too abstract for them to comprehend. Therefore, the RSS3 team decided that we would make rss3.io, which previously was only the portal for developer docs, the official RSS3 application where future innovations will happen. At the same time, all links from Cheers and Revery will be redirected to the corresponding links on rss3.io. With the watch and reader features on rss3.io, you can easily keep track of any addresses with an experience way better than Revery, and if you are looking for activity-focused profiles, they now come with any ENS or address you search.

From Here to Infinity and Beyond

Information dissemination was full of innovations in Web1 and Web2: At first, people found information on the Internet through directories like Yellow Pages. That was a time when there was very limited about what was online. Then, we had simple search engines that could help us find websites according to our needs. After that, we had feeds based on links (e.g., RSS and social media), which gave us all the information about people we care about. Then, we were dragged into algorithms, where information was fed to us automatically and adjusted according to our reactions.

As we step into Web3, the abundance of open data in decentralized networks brings opportunities as well as challenges for information dissemination:

• Information in Web3 has a much lower average content value compared to that of Web1 and Web2:
  • Most information is created as a “side-product” of actions
  • Incentives often create misalignments
• Information in Web3 has more complicated categories and logic, including but not limited to assets, content, social graphs, and transactions.
• The basic units of existence in Web3 (crypto addresses) naturally have actions and information in different networks and different contracts.

These lead to the fact that until today, the basic approaches for information dissemination in Web3 stay at directories, some feeds, and fundamental searches (which might be a bit too basic). Extensive research and engineering are still in need of better protocols and products for massive adoption. As the first and leading project working in this direction, we will keep innovating both on the protocol and application ends toward the new and free information society.

To infinity and beyond!