- SDF employees, regardless of coding background, successfully installed smart contracts on Soroban during the dogfooding experiment.
- “The Okashi Cakewalk” game promoted hands-on learning and community by utilizing ASCII art for NFT minting.
Recently, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) conducted an internal experiment called “dogfooding,” in which staff members from different departments were asked to create, implement, and carry out a smart contract on Soroban as a means of directly interacting with blockchain technology.
The SDF team is all in on #Stellar smart contracts. Last month, every employee wrote, deployed, and invoked a smart contract via https://t.co/hUhzIshtzy | (@sorobandev).
Can't hype what we haven't mastered🎂https://t.co/NhWOuXfxAZ
— Stellar (@StellarOrg) March 25, 2024
Taking on the Dogfooding Challenge with Blockchain
The foundation of this project was Okashi, a web-based platform designed specifically for Soroban smart contracts, along with a fun game called “The Okashi Cakewalk,” which was created in collaboration with SDF and Okashi.
It was the epitome of dogfooding, which involves using one’s own products to find areas where they could be improved from the perspective of the user. This shift in viewpoint was crucial in identifying user-centric improvements, even though it was difficult for designers who were heavily involved in the development process.
Setting off on this path required SDF members—many of whom had never programmed before—to become familiar with Rust programming, comprehend the complexities of smart contracts, and face the common difficulties of coding errors and debugging.
In order to create a smart contract on a platform as sophisticated as Soroban, one must become proficient in a number of areas, ranging from the fundamentals of contract development to the more complex procedures of contract compilation, deployment, and execution, echoing earlier coverage by ETHNews.
Dogfooding has two advantages, especially when considering Soroban’s revolutionary potential: it tests the platform’s robustness and usability and gives participants a thorough, hands-on learning experience that deepens their understanding of the technology they support and discuss in the workplace.
Ingenious Coding: The Cakewalk Game by Okashi
The Okashi Cakewalk was created with a number of goals in mind. It sought to create a simple, user-friendly framework for creating smart contracts that was accessible to novices.
The opportunity to apply this framework to Soroban in a hands-on, immersive way strengthened SDF’s understanding of Okashi as a useful tool for Soroban development. Crucially, it aimed to get first-hand input from developers on their experience, which is necessary for further improvements.
The clever design of the game aims to create a sense of community, excitement, and friendly competition among players. The challenge tested participants’ originality and ingenuity as they had to mint an NFT piece made inside a 5×5 grid using just ASCII letters.
Meanwhile, the price of Stellar native token, XLM, has risen in the last 24 hours and 7 days, by 3.00% and 13.38%, bringing it to $0,139.