Well, hello there, Ryders. 👋 Buckle up and #ryde with us on web3 🏍️

This is the first edition of our monthly newsletter, so expect this in your inbox every month; from the latest engineering release to the progress in hardware, we will cover everything. Also, don’t forget about the alpha leaks that you, Ryders, will be the first to scoop.🤫

To start off, I believe we all can agree that the race for Decentralized Identities (DIDs) is here. We are proud to say we are one of the teams eager to unlock its true potential, so let’s start on the various approaches we are taking to push the space forward and bring crypto to the next 100m.

🏆Ryder NFT-Pre sale

You are probably aware of this as seen in our Discord or Twitter alpha leaks. The answer is YES, we are doing an NFT-presale for the first 5,000 Ryder devices; ever since announcing it, the community response was simply overwhelming. To give you some stats, since I love growth, 70+ makers DMed us on Discord and Twitter wanting to get involved and be an early contributor. From software to hardware engineers, Ryders got it covered. Special shoutout to sleepi, resh, and Sean C for the early contributions. We’re currently looking for various community moderators for Korea, Japan, and beyond. If you’re interested, drop a message in our home on discord.

If you’ve been following us for quite some time, you know our team love innovation as Marvin and Friedger are OG builders who pushed a lot of engineering contribution to the Stacks ecosystem from the first Stacking provider, Friedger Pool to Executor DAO framework and SIP 018 (Stacks Improvement Proposal), our team are always hard at work to make the Stacks core infrastructure better, so, we are doing the same with NFTs.

The 3D clip above shows the initial concept for the upcoming pre-sale. Remember, this is a starting point and not the final NFTs, and on top of that, there will be a 1:1 drop given to early supporters as we’re all about bringing you the best community experience. The 1:1 NFT drop is the first of its kind; we wanted to bring the concept of metamorphosis to NFTs. 🦋 Imagine having an NFT that evolves every time Ryders reach a new milestone in product development. For example, if Ryder finishes manufacturing, the NFT evolves like your dear old Pokemon. These evolving NFTs will serve as your tracker for the Ryder device and will ultimately evolve into your PFPs once you receive your Ryders. 😏

It doesn’t stop here as there will be a lot of surprises along the way; we teased various genesis benefits such as Limited Edition DevKits, Memorabilia, and more. We’re targeting Q22022 for this pre-sale. More details to come soon.

🔧 Engineering

Marvin is leading Ryder’s Hardware Engineering alongside John and an external party (hopefully to be announced soon) to focus on a solid architecture. Currently, we are on Ryder Technical Architecture v0.5 as shown above. John, our Head of Hardware Development, usually says that security requires a totally different design, and rushing into hasty decisions can only result in hundreds of wasted hours in re-designing unusable architecture. At Ryder, we take the Stacks approach of slowly but surely and a lot of R&D. We are here to build for the long game. By carefully designing the technical architecture, we will be able to:

• Provide a high level of accuracy to incorporate the product features of Ryder and its underlying provision.

• Determines the long-term course of design and development.

It is important to remember that as our development progresses, the bandwidth for changing the architectural design decreases to zero. Once a smart contract is launched, it cannot be changed. If you missed something or made a crucial error, you must redo and deploy it again. The same goes for hardware: it cannot be changed once it is produced. The DevKit is our “testnet deployment” to ensure we get everything right for our mainnet release.

Software update

Friedger started working on getting authentication up-to-date, so everyone who has Ryder Prototype 3 can access Stacks applications and test the entire connect flow soon. To those, who don’t have prototype 3, you can use the Ryder Simulator and play around with the Ryder Firmware. The build is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Thanks to Enzo Meertens, Ryder’s engineering partner for continually improving these firmware builds.

Enzo spent a lot of time refactoring and cleaning up the firmware code. He is currently working on a comprehensive testing suite and temporary testing tool to get the firmware where we want it to be.

We’re also happy to announce Hiro is adopting our SIP018 Signed Structured Data proposal for Hiro Wallet. The Signed Structured Data specification describes a standard way to deterministically encode and sign Structured Data. Structured Data is data that can be represented in human-readable format and used in applications and smart contracts. The aim of the standard is to produce signatures that are straightforward and inexpensive to verify by smart contracts. Structuring the data is important so the end-user can read and understand what is being signed.

As Marvin stated, this is a precursor to our off-chain actions that we want to bring to the space such as peer-to-peer NFT trades, proof of hodl/ownership, and much more! It will allow people to sign all sorts of off-chain messages that can later trigger an on-chain action on behalf of the signer.

Product development

Based on the latest technical architecture, various interesting proposals from the functional and aesthetic points of view came upon the product development side. With this, Kiki and Toms have begun refining the technical designs, modelling, and drawings for manufacturing.

To give you a scoop about product design decisions, we are discussing specifics such as how Ryder’s body outer “ring” and base can now be aluminum – a full metal back part makes it robust and protects it against hacker attacks such as bootload and physical attacks. It also brings the element of sustainability as metal is infinitely recyclable being the most recycled material (60-70%) in the whole world. Possible making Ryder low carbon footprint in a circular economy.

There is a whole lot more that we are discussing such as how do we prevent water, moisture, and dust ingress when combining materials with different expansion coefficients but we will save that for next time! 💯

Bitcoin-Powered Domain Names

Bitcoin-powered domain names need more love since it was launched last June. So, we made it one of our missions to bring you the best experience and work on adopting identities in the Stacks Ecosystem and beyond. While we implement various social features for Ryder and wait for the actual devices, our team will make bitcoin-powered domain names the norm. Being in the ecosystem for as long as we can remember, we are bullish we can bring more identities to STX and Bitcoin through our known community building and growth skills. Wait for the new release, and it is coming. 🧑‍🚀

Community

Ryder's Rebrand

A few weeks ago, we announced our collaboration with Generous Studio, a creative design firm in Amsterdam and Lisbon that created award-winning design and motion development products with brands like Samsung, Unilever, and more.

Together, we ought to deliver a branding identity that speaks to everyone and avoid crypto brands’ common pitfalls, which become one of the central de facto of user alienation. Our space is obsessed with dark mode and solid cryptic palettes. I mean, we are guilty as well, so we’re trying to do our best to change this as our community is all about removing the technical constraints of the crypto space!

Initially, we did an analysis workshop to see where our current branding stands; we wanted a branding identity that shows the human side of Ryder, as we’re all about bringing web3 to the physical world and making it more accessible to a broad audience.

Here are some initial concepts for our new branding! Again, nothing is final 😉

Ryder Initial Concept Logo

Below are two concepts that we’re working on which gives you the feeling of high-end tech and lifestyle brands.

Ryder Branding Concept 1

Ryder Branding Concept 2

Friedger Müffke joins Ryder

Friedger – a name that you probably came across in the Stacks ecosystem one way or another. Friedger is a long-time contributor to the ecosystem since 2018, he worked on the Android SDK and has submitted many patches, test libraries, and tools as they have become available. He is currently running the famous friedgerpool with a TVL of more than 30m$.

He got his start in 2001 when he wrote an article about Curl Content Language in Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Afterward, he found love with Android after the announcement of the mobile open-source platform in 2007. Friedger is also known for co-founding the Berlin office, OpenIntents, and Android Conference Droidcon. Now, he is joining the Ryder team. Talk about a team full of Stacks OGs.

Community Recap

ICYMI, we introduced Ryder to the entire community in our recent meetup, where we went over the current crypto landscape, our thesis about hardware-based identities, and why we believe the ultimate solution boils down to software + hardware. Our team also teased Ryder’s various USPs such as tap-to-send, social recovery, proof-of-hodl, face-to-face interaction, and much more. Watch the recap below to get the latest update from our team 👇

During the same day, Friedger also had a session on Hardware-Based Identities: Secure Verifiable Credentials. This talk showed how Ryder manages your decentralized identities for all crypto-related operations.

That is a wrap, and we hope you enjoyed this newsletter! There are many moving pieces, especially we are doing hardware + software, but we are more confident than ever about achieving our mission. Together, we will bring web3 to everyone!

If you are looking for a home to geek out about DIDs, hardware, and software or just crypto in general, join our discord! You will also receive the latest information about our upcoming NFT Pre-sale and more 😏

What’s on the Horizon

• NFT.NYC – You heard it here first, Ryder is presenting at the SuperBowl of NFTs this June! We will share with the entire NFT community our version of Metaverse, where we bring everything digital to the physical world and not the other way around.

• Bitcoin Unleashed 2022 – Of course, we’re not missing the flagship event of Stacks at the notable Faena Forum in Miami Beach, Florida.