Brief intro of the co-founders:

Brandon: co-founder, works on Growth, Partnerships, and Strategy

Dariya: co-founder, works on Product and Design

2023 - biggest highlights: the number of ecosystems Layer3 was able to work with. Launch of Base and other L2 quests, Solana support, Cosmos support. Layer3 showcased the biggest innovations across all ecosystems. There were many innovations on the wallet level, and Layer3 worked with both Uniswap & Phantom across multiple L2. The goal was to curate the best experiences for the community.

Layer3 v2:

CUBEs are the main new feature. ERC-721 credentials that are going to be minted at the end of each quest. It will solidify community participation on-chain, and communities on Layer3 will be able to use CUBEs to distribute rewards and determine eligibility for future quests. The goal is to launch this credential across multiple chains and ecosystems.

We plan to use CUBEs to distribute tokens and serve as the foundation for the Layer3 economy where users, creators, referrers, and developers all earn tokens through Layer3.

CUBEs will improve the loyalty program. We listen to what users are doing and what they all want. We identified a way to enable our best questers to unlock progressively better features as they progress. By doing quests, you’ll unlock fee-free swap, bridge, a GM streak repair, gas rebate, XP boost, and more.

We will introduce the Layer3 shop where you’ll be able to redeem those perks.

Progress on those rewards is different from your Layer3 progress. These rewards are linked to seasons. The goal is to have the most enjoyable reward system in crypto. Regarding streak repair, we’ve worked on UX improvement. In the past few months, we went into a listening mode - listening to our users, and people really wanted the GM streak repair. It’s coming soon for everyone. It will allow you to repair your streak up to 3 days if you missed it. Everyone will be able to sleep a little bit better.

We are trying to improve the look and feel of the platform, improving the quest experience with faster quests, reducing the animations that may slow you down; the platform truly gets better the more users are on it.

As far as the ecosystems, we will double down on supporting Layer2s, especially new chains, alongside Solana and Cosmos. We also have an interesting experience coming up with Bitcoin Ordinals, very soon with an honorable partner - we’re excited to see how the community will engage with it.

On the token-rewards plan of v2:

Introducing the concept of the Layer3 economy. Around token rewards, with v2 - if you have a certain level on Layer3, you’ll be able to earn ownership in the form of tokens through quests on Layer3, and they will be live on a weekly basis. In addition to that, you’ll also be eligible to earn ETH when referring friends to complete quests. We will talk later about the quest creation feature, but the core premise of the Layer3 economy is that as Layer3 grows, you guys will get better rewards from the platform. We will also introduce dynamic rewards based on your transaction cost, transaction value, and that will be both with XP and token rewards further down the line.

Layer3’s plans to decentralize and to become a DAO:

We think about Layer3 v2 in the context of the broader economy. V2 marks the beginning of our path towards decentralization; our end goal is for Layer3 to be community-owned and operated. We can’t say more, but you guys will be excited by what’s coming.

What’s on the 2024 roadmap:

Builders and quests creators grants. Shortly after v2, we will be launching a grants program where anyone in the community can earn a grant to begin creating its own quests. We will work with you to create those quests, but the core premise is you can showcase products or chains you are most excited about to your followers and to others in the community while being able to earn ETH. The second element is that after v2, we will be launching governance, a forum where as a user you can begin voting on things like quests creation grants, creative integrations, and a bunch more. We will have another talk on governance when that goes live with you, the community, and our partners we work with.

Final element: the concept of interacting with protocols directly from Layer3. Right now to complete a quest, you have to leave Layer3 to use protocols, complete actions, come back to Layer3, and validate quests. Our goal is to bring those experiences to the Layer3 platform itself so that you can interact with protocols and complete quests without having to leave. The first two we will integrate this with are probably LiFi and Socket to enable people to do things cross-chains very simply. As far as the goal, it’s to allow you to complete quests with a much better experience directly on Layer3.

Will v2 reward high-level users in any way?

Yes. With v2, the higher level you are, the more you are earning and have access to specific quests gated to specific levels.

What are the benefits of leveling up?

Many benefits. Two key categories: more ownership (of protocols that you use most through token rewards) and greater influence. Greater influence in those communities by accumulating those tokens but also greater influence with the Layer3 community.

Will Layer3 share rewards from publishing platforms like Mirror or Paragraph?

Yes, absolutely. With v2, all rewards will be redirected to users between two paths: quests/quests creators grants.

The latest timing of the v2 release and how users can get involved:

Stay tuned. We will be dropping new announcements in the next few weeks.

Does Layer3 have plans to launch official campaigns like Linea Voyage?

Yes. Several very exciting campaigns will be live soon. The one I can mention are Base and Berachain, but there are few others in the works. This is a core focus for 2024. We know that you want to explore new chains through official campaigns.

Has Layer3 applied for any grants?

Yes, for a bunch. We will be announcing exciting news very soon. The core objective with these grants is to distribute 100% of the value to the community through the channels we mentioned earlier. In 2024, the theme is recurring, and it’s earning ownership in protocols that you guys use the most.

General UX and feature requests. When will Layer3 bridge add support for Solana?

We have an exciting integration with a bridge aggregator that is coming soon. That will support Solana, and we aim to have that live by early February.

Are there plans to introduce features around on-chain reputations and if so how?

Our ideas are related to CUBEs as the building blocks for this. People on Layer3 are completing quests and that involves rich data about their on-chain reputation. We will solidify all of that on-chain and ensure that we have a great network to build a system to categorize users based on their reputation. It’s exploration here, but if we build something around on-chain reputation, it will likely rely heavily on CUBEs collected and CUBEs holders.

Are there any plans to enhance the suggested quests features to avoid repetitive quests?

Great feedback. We will aim to improve that going forward.

60-minutes rule:

We recently introduced a feature about a 60-minutes rule, and people asked us about its role in the product and how we think about future-looking transactions compared to legacy transactions. The philosophy: the vast majority of our quests are meant to be future-facing; this rule ensures quest verifications happen on a future-facing basis. Galxe has a feature to inform users about quests they can already claim, and that’s a great idea - we have to look into a way to integrate this to boost the user experience. It’s a fantastic callout.

Do we have the possibility to highlight quests that are about to expire? So users avoid missing out.

Great UX feedback. We need to integrate that. It’s something we hope to do as soon as possible to make the experience much more enjoyable.

Dariya is most excited about the Layer3 economy. 

Every stakeholder will be able to earn tokens based on contributions. Enabling everyone to be able to participate is what’s most exciting about the year to come. Brandon agrees; the Layer3 economy creates alignments between ecosystems partners and the community. We want Layer3 to be community-owned and community-operated.

We will be doing community calls more frequently than last year and across all time zones. We know this timezone isn’t great for a certain cohort of users, so we will make sure to use different time zones.

There are many projects similar to Layer3; what makes Layer3 special?

Ever since Layer3 was founded, we understood two principles: the first is that one of the most noble aspects of crypto is the ownership economy (the ability to earn ownership in the products/community you are in), and the second aspect is that crypto today is cumbersome to explore, so our objective was to enable more people to participate in the ownership economy by making crypto fun and engaging. 

When you use our product, there are elements to it that really simplify what it is that you are trying to do on-chain, and it allows you to earn ownership. With JITO alone, over $1M of JTO tokens were directly distributed to users who made transactions because of the Layer3 quests. I think there were multiples of that with the Arbitrum airdrop, etc. We have done a great job in facilitating ownership for our users. UX is a core principle, and so much of what we shipped last year and will ship this year is really around making it the most enjoyable place to spend time on-chain. Those are a few points, and there are much more, I’m sure.

We primarily focus on the end-user, and we want to make your experience as enjoyable as possible, and I’m sure you can feel that different between interacting with Layer3 and interacting with these other quests platforms. At the end of the day, we think about how we can make this the most delightful experience for users exploring and using crypto, and we really try hard to do that. We hope people in the audience feel strongly about that as we do. That’s the primary difference compared to other quests platforms.

What are the upcoming plans of the Layer3 ecosystem, will it introduce decentralized governance?

The answer is yes, the end-goal as we mentioned earlier is for Layer3 to be community-owned and community-operated. We firmly believe in the principles of decentralization and are working very hard to make that a reality.

Thank everyone for joining. We know time zones are a bit tricky, so we will be doing these calls on a more regular basis and across different time zones so hopefully, some folks that weren’t able to make it this time will be able to join next time. Our ambassadors will be sending around notes, and we will hang around Discord to answer some more questions so feel free to type them in the general channel. Thanks, everyone for joining; we will have a very exciting remainder of 2024, so stay tuned and keep questing.

Notes from thelayer3guy.eth