So I got email about upcoming newsletter so I reckon I'd write some updates regarding my journey as a grantee from 2021.
A word about my project
First things first, the grant funded project that I was working on, ProgNovel, was officially dead - though not simply. Shortly after Coil discontinued in 2023, I put my project on hiatus and put development on hold due to many reasons. I had few inquiries about the project but the adoption rate was abysmal so the hiatus decision wasn't so damaging.
At that time one of the main reason for my hiatus was a technical one. One Javascript framework, Astro, was rising at the time and it has things that my project was all about. So I explore and dabble some projects with it and see if I can learn one thing or two. It was so good and as the exploration went on, some things came to my mind thinking about my hiatus project: "well, it's cooked now" or "what's the point continuing if this framework has it all". Fast forward to 2026 I thought it again and realized that it was really cooked from the start. Seeing the technical prowess and inovation that Astro team has (that led them acquired by Cloudflare) left me no room to compete with them.
The project ProgNovel went hiatus in 2023, it was never returned, archived in 2024.
What comes after that
So during my exploration on Astro framework gave birth of a social media project that I named ProgForum - the prefix Prog because it was a spritual successor for my archived project ProgNovel. I didn't choose to build novel platform again and pick a social media because the previous experience wasn't going well for me, a decision that proved quite right since now that community was filled with industrialized AI generated slop content that even prominent creators had since "pulled out" of the scene by cashing out and sold their platform to some Korean IT giants. The dead internet theory was so true in that community that beginners starting out creating content won't ever have chance to compete with contents pumping out of ChatGPT or Gemini.
Anyway, back on ProgForum topic; this thing is built on Astro, the thing that made me gave up on my previous project. And one thing that so good about Astro is that it's an agnostic framework, meaning my years of learning of Svelte framework during building ProgNovel wasn't wasted - many codes even reused in the new project. While Astro had its own edge I had fun building a social media with it. Astro was a framework that was ahead of its time adopting next gen tech like View Transitions - the most fun I ever had working on a project. Seeing that one component seamlessly morphing into other component as the page transitions make me want to give a chef kiss every time.
As a social media, ProgForum has two tightly knitted spaces - tweet feed à la Twitter where users can, well, tweet, and another one is a good old fashioned forum where people can discuss things at great length.
There's a plan for Web Monetizaton in this: later on users can set payment pointer so they can stream revenue when people engaging with their tweets or forum post the made. It was pretty simple at that front. The real challange however come from another (that I thought pretty rad) freature that I'd like to call emoji clapping. It is a emoji "like" button like any other reactions button in other social media like Discord but instead of toggling a button you clap (like clapping mechanic in Medium website). So one user can give multiple emojies and claps on them multiple time because I thought sometimes one thumb up might not enough - sometimes you just want to slap multiple thumbs up, even thousands if you can (ignoring the fact that is's phyiscally imposible in real life), just so you can express how you enjoy tweets or contents people made. Now here's the Web Monetization comes into place: or rather, it has more to do with Interledger payment than Web Monetization API, as emoji claps can be used as "currency" to reward creators. There wasn't a solid final plan on how to do this but the general idea is that by the end of the month or so you can setup a tipping budget (either by subscription or one time payment) that split tips to creators based on how much you spend mouse clicks clapping emojies on them. Clap clap clap. Money money money.
ProgForum started around 2024. Around 2 years in, it wasn't actively developed and I haven't picked it up since last year. The thing about Astro is that it is a Javascript framework. And the thing about Javascript is that it moves fast and break things even faster. One morning (let's call it morning because I don't remember the exact time) I just happen to chill and see - oh cool, a new update! Run the command to update dependencies and immediately starting to regret it. Not only it breaks the dev server, even after rolling back, the dev start command won't even start anymore. The error message I see wasn't helping much because the thing about shiny new toy in coding is that because it's new, there wasn't enough people to share their error problems and not much posts on the internet for me to fix my problem. I didn't know whether Astro framework, or Svelte, or Tailwind CSS v4, Drizzle, or Bun that gives the problem (all of them was quite new and or was in unstable version at the time because I fancy myself creating "next-gen" social platform), after amateurly diagnosing the problem myself and failed at it only to rage OS restart, the problem somehow went away on its own later on. I don't know which one that has the new update that fix the problem, but anyway I could still continue developing the project. However, despite some feature ready to test like emojis, tweets, and comments, and so on, the previous errors left me jaded and I felt like I don't want to give a chef kiss anymore.
I didn't touch it again somewhere in 2025 because my focus went to another side project (a Javascript game) and some hackatons. The code is just sitting there, and since it was a project that I had the most fun and had the feature that I proud of (like emoji claps and the transition animation), I got a complicated feeling whenever I accidentally see the project folder. I'm not sure if I want to continue with it because after the fun and hype I had with it, I know now that building a social media was a huge undertaking. A short lived enthusiasm won't cut it. What I had now is still far away from being a proper, realiable social media to be used for people to enjoy. In short, I was burn out.
2026 - what now?
While now I'm not actively developing anything related to the project from five years ago I occasionally checking out things on Interledger space, like the Interledger payment API, how things going with Web Monetization spec, and so on. I remember now I had few small projects that I share back a while ago that I forgot about until I write this. I even checking out Interledger blockchain-based rival, x402 initiated by Coinbase, though that one isn't exactly one-to-one rival to Interledger since the two focus on two different use case (Interledger focus being agnostic and inclusive while x402 focus on crypto and automated payment made for AI agents). Earlier this year one particular online hackaton that I participated in was memorable, since I create a freelancing platform with blockchain escrow via Solidity with it - something that I wish Interledger could do that too.
As someone who live in a country that a credit card wasn't a mainstream I still thought Interledger (and x402 too) is cool and still want to use them in my future projects. (Unfortunately no ILP wallet available in my region at the moment).
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