Hey Builders 👋

Andy here, back with your regular dose of Happy Hacking! Hope you're all having a productive week. Things have been buzzing here, and we've got some exciting updates to share with you. Let's jump straight in!

Okay, let's talk blockchains. We know, we know, it feels like there's a new one popping up every week! You might be thinking, "Seriously? Another chain?" And honestly, we get it. But this one is a bit special, and for a very specific reason.

We've been growing fast, supporting more and more fantastic chains for you to build on. Which is brilliant! But it also means a growing workload for us. Deploying our smart contracts, subgraphs, API, Rewards Platform – it's a lot to manage across every new chain.

While we're happy to support this broad ecosystem, we also realised we needed a solution that really scales. Our vision is for the Open Format Chain to become the go-to place for community coordination and rewards. But crucially, we want to ensure you can still reward your users, no matter what chain they're on.

And this is where the Open Format Chain comes into its own. Being on Aurora, which is itself a smart contract on NEAR, unlocks the incredible potential of NEAR Intents for us!

What does this mean in practice? Cross-chain magic! NEAR Intents allow us to make calls across different chains seamlessly. For example, we're currently exploring a collaboration with a project that wants to reward their community on Solana. Now, Solana isn't EVM compatible (and Open Format is, at its core). Without NEAR Intents, supporting Solana rewards would mean a complete system overhaul – something we're keen to avoid (at least for now!).

But with NEAR Intents? Cross-chain rewards become a real possibility, allowing you to engage your community wherever they are, while leveraging the power of the Open Format ecosystem.

Our journey with the Open Format Chain literally kicked off just hours ago when I deployed the very first community. We're already working hard, and hopefully, by the next newsletter, we'll have conjured up some cross-chain wizardry to share with you all!

Next up, a feature many of you have been asking for: Multi-Token Leaderboards! We've noticed that many communities are using Open Format to reward different types of contributions with different tokens. Makes perfect sense!

And you asked, and we delivered! Multi-Token Leaderboards went live in our rewards platform just yesterday. We're excited about this one.

What's the benefit? Flexibility and deeper insights! Previously, our leaderboards were focused on a single token. Now, you can track leaderboards for all the different tokens you're using to reward your community.

This gives you a much richer picture of community engagement.

This not only provides more granular data on contribution types but also adds a new layer of friendly competition. Community members can see exactly where they stand for each type of reward, potentially encouraging even greater participation and a clearer understanding of valuable contributions within your ecosystem.

We (and the rest of the internet) have been talking about AI Agents for a couple of months now. Recently, we started building. We're thrilled to give you a first look at the very first version of our community agent, currently in Alpha stage within our own community.

This first iteration is focused on understanding our community members better. It engages in a friendly chat, asking about skills, interests, and how individuals want to contribute within a given community.

Why is this important? Because the future of community agents is about personalised support and contribution pathways. Imagine you join an open-source project using Open Format. The community agent can understand you're a skilled developer with a passion for coding. This agent can then proactively suggest relevant open issues and highlight opportunities for you to contribute code and earn rewards!

Or, if you're a seasoned moderator, the agent could identify key conversations in a community's social channels where your expertise in community guidance would be invaluable, again, with appropriate recognition and rewards for your efforts.

This is just the beginning. It's the first step in our Learn. Coordinate. Reward vision, paving the way for smarter, more efficient, and more personalised community experiences powered by AI. We're excited about the potential and can't wait to share more as we progress!

Over the coming weeks, we'll be adding a button to the platform, allowing you to request Alpha access to our community agent and start using it in your own community. If you really can't wait, hit us up in Discord or book a call with me.

That's it! See you next time!

Cheers,
Andy, Dan, and the Open Format Team

Psst 👋 New to Open Format?

You can create a token, badge, and reward them in just three minutes on our platform. Yes, you read that right. Three minutes. What a time to be alive.

Try it for yourself here.