Introduction
Due to everything at Sushi moving around recently I think a quick introduction of myself and the Shōyu team would be a great place to start this update. My name is Ryan and I started contributing at Sushi in July and I made the switch to Shōyu in August as UI/UX and general designer full time. I stepped into the role of Product Manager to keep the project moving forwards during the internal issues Sushi was facing.
I think it would be fair to say that the community hasn’t yet had a chance to meet the team working on Shōyu or the updates surrounding it. I would like to take responsibility for this as we stepped into the shadows to continue development throughout the internal issues Sushi was facing. As we venture into the future we will host AMA’s with the team with a focus on listening to the community and sharing our progress with the project.
We have a very focused team that is working on building the foundation of Shōyu 2.0. The team has remained consistent throughout the changes in Sushi and we have been working throughout without obstructions.
Ryan - PM / Lead UI/UX
Salman - Lead Backend Developer
Masayoshi - Lead Frontend Developer
h4v1g - Full Stack Developer
gator - Part-time Frontend Developer
Aria - Artist relations
Summary
For clarification for the community, Shōyu had a bit of an identity crisis during the initial development and a lot of features were removed or changed completely due to a myriad of reasons. The idea of an open marketplace faded and a more exclusive/curated experience came to the forefront as it was easier to attain in a short time but we as a team don’t feel that was in line with what the community was expecting from the original Shōyu proposal.
The good news is that we are building Shōyu 2.0 and it is back on track to something that we believe the community will be extremely excited about. Shōyu 2.0 will be an open marketplace, initially launching on Ethereum mainnet with plans to expand quickly after launch. We are initially focused on developing the marketplace and accompanying social features to allow creators and collectors to have a platform to create and foster their communities.
What’s changed?
Shōyu had a lot of ideas, ideas that would have taken years to develop if done properly but were promised to be available before January 2022. I’ve spent a long time restructuring and reorganizing the product’s priorities and goals for a successful relaunch.
Features planned for 2.0
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Shōyu’s initial was a closed experience, only curated artists could mint and only NFTs minted through Shōyu could be bought and sold. For Shōyu 2.0 there will be no closed launch and all NFTs on Ethereum mainnet can be purchased and sold.
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Offer system - This is something that should have come with our initial launch. Users will be able to make offers on NFTs that are not currently ‘on auction’ allowing you to make and receive offers on all of your NFTs. I know this is expected, but it is something we missed with the initial launch.
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No reliance on external API’s for indexing. We are building an inhouse NFT indexer built with Streaming Fast technology which is state of the art for this application.
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Social features - A major issue with current marketplaces is a lack of ability to showcase your creations or collections, it all feels a bit like a dashboard as opposed to a creative space. We want to change that with:
– Highly customisable profiles and personalized galleries with a focus on allowing the user to express themselves
– Social feed to share your NFTs with your fans, community and friends with the ability to make text based posts. E.g. BAYC will be able to post a news update to their community. Users are in control of what is shared and what they see on their feed. The idea is to allow users to enjoy Shōyu and build communities along with their creations or collections outside of the marketplace. The idea for this is to work very similarly to Twitter whilst integrating our marketplace. When you mint an item or collection you will be able to choose to notify your followers by posting it to your feed. -
Search and discovery features that actually work. Almost all marketplaces suffer from a very restrictive search feature making it hard to find exactly what you want. We’ve seen and felt this issue and we’re building a solution for a top shelf discovery system:
– Rarity tools built into the marketplace giving you the ability to search by rarity ranking and seeing the stats with ease.
– Community based tagging: To help with search and discovery we’re developing a solution to allow the community to add and remove search tags on items. -
The original UI concepts were designed by SDL and they needed a lot of work before they worked well with the product. The problem is that they were designed for a very curation focused platform and were not friendly for everyone. Shōyu UI has been completely redesigned for 2.0 with a friendlier, more colourful approach. UI accent colour can also be chosen by the user, helping with ease of access and personalisation.
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Versatile collector tools:
– Ability to make offers based on a focused NFT property or trait
– Floor sweep items in a collection -
Gas efficient contracts which are up to 54% more gas efficient (compared to competing marketplaces)
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Curation will remain, albeit in a different form. The idea for curation moving forwards is to have curated drops every 2 weeks to a month with a focus on quality. Our previous system had 10 artists per week which made it impossible to really work with the artists and implement the support and marketing needed to be successful.
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Sushi integration. Users will have the option to swap tokens through Sushiswap when purchasing items or accepting an offer. This gives more freedom to NFT collectors and creators while also directing trading volume to the Sushi platform.
Note: We are not affiliated with Azuki, they just look really cool 
