Issue #3 August 2022

August was on ???

The WIN team got very close to the soft launch of the platform. We’ve been working hard in different directions: onboarding new people, assembling the product, developing UX, improving communications, establishing partnerships, and building, building, building.

Thank you for following and reading already the third issue of WIN minutes.

• Vladimir, Marketing Lead at Winding Tree

???The team

Let us start with people because we have some new bright individuals on board. Mokhi, our chief heart officer successfully found 5 humans to strengthen the team. Maya, Rob, Nabil, Eliane, and Sil will amplify UX, partnerships, community, communication, and culture.

• To review the whole Winding Tree team, hit the link.

???Partnerships

Lots of very interesting and fruitful discussions are happening around the partnerships with hotels. Thanks to our new agreement with Derbysoft Vincent (the head of partnerships) can now pitch WIN to major hospitality brands and major PMS and Channel Managers. He is juggling a lot of huge names on team calls, which we will announce as soon as all the legal agreements are signed.

What we can share is the fact, that all potential partners give pure positive feedback. It is not a secret that hoteliers dream of having an independent platform enabling peer-to-peer bookings, but on the other hand, they are confused about terms like Web3, Crypto, and smart contracts. Therefore seeing their support and interest inspires us a lot!

???Frens who travel

Partnerships are being developed in multiple directions. We communicate a lot with DAOs, fellow blockchain teams, and companies, as well as with organizers of blockchain conferences. Getting their feedback helps us the product creating a tool that will bridge numerous businesses into Web 3.0.

• Be among the first early adopters who will shape the new ethos of travel

???IRL events

In September WIN the team is going to participate in several blockchain events. Hit us with a message on Discord if you are going to be in any of the destinations below to meet and talk.

Here is the list of confirmed conferences:

• ETHWarsaw (Warsaw);
• Dappcon (Berlin);
• Web 3.0 in Travel Summit (Porto).

???Porto

There is no better way to learn, how Web 3.0 is going to change the travel industry than to book a ticket to https://web3intravel.com/ and meet with the executives running major blockchain X travel projects.

Max (our founder and CEO) will present the WIN platform and the product roadmap to the community. We sincerely recommend visiting the event.

?? ???Berlin

Dappcon will be one of the major September destinations for blockchain developers. This conference is organized by the Gnosis community our friends and partners. In August we met with Martin K?ppelmann in the very heart of the Berlin blockchain community and received his positive feedback on WIN vision and product.

???Warsaw

Poland is one of the most rapidly developing countries in Europe. The same can be applied to the local Web 3.0 community. No wonder the ETHWarsaw is gathering under one roof quite a number of amazing speakers and projects to share, learn and hack together.

We will use this opportunity to network and custdev new our frens in order to improve the product and build new bonds with communities.

?? ??The product

You must be a bit intrigued with the word ?product?. There is only one explanation: we are so excited about the future launch!

Unlike the pilots, we had in Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Paris, the new version will enable travelers to enjoy booking with crypto, have 50+ cities worldwide to stay in, and sustain their trips in different ways.

For frens going to blockchain conferences, we will have the best offers for the nearest hotels to venues. All these and many other features will be based on easy and clean UX.

The technical team gave to me the following update to share:

• The WIN application was rewritten to make it generic for B2C bookings;
• Multiple stablecoins over Gnosis Chain and Polygon we implemented;
• The partnership with Simard gave WIN access to the global hotel inventory;
• The app was soft-launched in production with a restricted audience to validate the features and polish it;
• We focused on the User Experience, but not aiming at being pixel-perfect for now.

Moving forward with a product we also work on the legal side. Cristina our lawyer and project manager drafted the two important documents to regulate the relations between WIN and travelers.

?? ♀??The hero of the month

Meet Eliane, our UX designer. She is the first person to be the hero of the month. This is her story.

A month since I joined WT

Coming from a Web2.0 background I was excited to share my knowledge?and best UX practices with the?team to help them build the very first beta version of WIN and with the same excitement, I was eager to learn more about the blockchain technology and how it is helping millions of users trust the process.

After meeting with all the stakeholders and team members, I understood WIN’s main goal, with the support of the team we built a wireframe that represents how we want the product to look like and what we want the user to achieve using our product.

We identified the Why’s and What’s and we prioritized a basic smooth and simple UX that works with the technical specifications we have at the moment and?guess what? WE DID IT

In the coming weeks, the fun part will begin. We will start onboarding our first users to start seeing them use the product and share their experience with us. This will help us prioritize our next steps and focus on our users’ needs to enhance the product.

I am grateful for the supportive team and I am looking forward to developing a solid product that will be the destination for sustainable and decentralized travel bookings in the nearest future!

The best is yet to come, stay tuned!

And to wind up. If you have any comments or ideas to share, please respond in the comments, I read them all.

Vladimir