4IRE LABS

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of The KROK

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

At KROK we create progressive blockchain solutions that are widely used worldwide. We build NFT | Web3 | Crypto | Wallets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire 4IRE to accomplish?

• Enhance our development team
• Research & discover a new blockchain module
• Design & development of product MVP based on it

SOLUTION

How did you find 4IRE?

Referral

Why did you select 4IRE over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

How many teammates from 4IRE were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

4ire Labs played a key role in creating our internal liquidity pool management platform. Throughout our collaboration, they successfully provided:
- Discovery and scoping for the app and internal tool;
- Concept creation for the app’s design;
- Clickable MVP prototype;
- End-to-end UX/UI design and development for both the frontend and backend;
- Deployment and launch of the app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Real-time requirement discussions and feedback sessions with the team.
Consistent code contributions to ensure steady progress.
Weekly team meetings to provide status updates and align on priorities.
Regular sprint reviews, including project progress updates and feature demonstrations.
Collaborative planning and retrospective sessions to refine and enhance the project workflow.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management was efficient and responsive. They consistently delivered items on time and adapted quickly to our needs, ensuring alignment with our goals.

What was your primary form of communication with 4IRE?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their expertise in web development and UI/UX design was awe-inspiring. They delivered a polished, user-friendly interface and ensured smooth functionality of a blockchain part. Their attention to detail and ability to translate complex requirements into an intuitive design were just great for a fair price.

Are there any areas for improvement or something 4IRE could have done differently?

Everything was great, and we were delighted with the collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Project Manager of a climate insurance company. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are building a decentralized climate insurance platform on Polkadot. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire 4IRE to accomplish?

• MVP design
• Development of MVPs
• Development of additional features

SOLUTION

How did you find 4IRE?

Online Search

Why did you select 4IRE over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from 4IRE were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

After sharing initial business ideas with 4ire Labs, we requested them to design and develop the software for the MVP; once the MVP was complete, we worked to integrate with other blockchain platforms and implemented additional functionalities. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• delivered the MVP application built with Substrate custom blockchain framework 
• established a solid reliable management and maintenance environment for us to keep developing many additional features 
• delivered all additional functionalities including integration with other blockchains, API integrations with external softwares 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

4ire Labs has delivered the development we requested exactly as we asked for. They are a very disciplined and client-focused team. At the same time, they were flexible and had a wealth of resources to accommodate the changes we requested. The team members and leaders at 4ire Labs always work together for the success of their clients.

What was your primary form of communication with 4IRE?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What impresses me most is their attitude towards project ownership: 4ire Labs treats the client's project as if it were their own and proposes a solution after a lot of thought and deep consideration. They are a partner with whom you can work on important projects.

Are there any areas for improvement or something 4IRE could have done differently?

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Vest Labs

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Decentralized perpetual futures exchange.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire 4IRE to accomplish?

Implementation

SOLUTION

How did you find 4IRE?

Referral

Why did you select 4IRE over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from 4IRE were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Take prior implementation and advance it to prod-ready. Prior implementation was scrapped together under tight deadline and did not take into consideration many issues such as scalability and reliability. Key deliverables included a testnet version 2, which saw ~200 online traders, and a mainnet ready code.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Simply that they delivered quality code on time with very low cost compared to US-based contractors.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They are very self-sufficient in the sense that they can transfer knowledge to newly onboarded team members themselves. They are able to respond to all my needs/deliver items on time and most importantly was able to distill down certain tasks without coming back and forth (only asking the necessary but right questions).

What was your primary form of communication with 4IRE?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I found the talent and the management equally impressive. Every developer we have worked with thus far is outstanding in terms of skill, professionalism, and cooperation. But on top of that, the business development director we work with is constantly suggesting ways to improve our processes. (e.g. adding someone else like a QA engineer to speed up the development lifecycles).

Are there any areas for improvement or something 4IRE could have done differently?

Nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP of Sales

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Blockchain service company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire 4IRE to accomplish?

• 4IRE was responsible for the development of EVM-compatible NFT Marketplace to create and trade non-fungible tokens.

SOLUTION

How did you find 4IRE?

Referral

Why did you select 4IRE over others?

Good value for cost, Company values aligned, Other

What was the size of 4IRE’s team?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We had several workshops to determine our requirements and business goals. Our objective was to launch white-label NFT solution and not to build from scratch. The team deployed a pre-made NFT marketplace solution with third-party payment integration and a set of features we required.

4IRE delivered the project within 2 months. We received a feature-rich and cost-effective NFT Marketplace and speeded up the time to market as we didn’t have to build the solution from scratch.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• We received a feature-rich and cost-effective NFT Marketplace and speeded up the time to market as we didn’t have to build the solution from scratch.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We communicated regularly via Jira and Slack. The team was very flexible and easy to reach and managed to deliver within the predefined timeline.

What was your primary form of communication with 4IRE?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We were impressed by the professionalism of their team who performed their tasks smoothly and on time. It's a pleasure to work with a team that is capable of flexibility without sacrificing quality.

Are there any areas for improvement or something 4IRE could have done differently?

4IRE was comfortable to work with and we are satisfied with the end result.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Hackmakers, a build-to-earn web3 organisation running hackathon challenges for clients and learners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 4IRE?

4IRE helped us with the discovery process of our planned NFT mint, and provided an overview of the best ERC token standards for our feature set.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched through various blockchain agencies and shortlisted down the top 3, based on previous projects listed on their website. We then interviewed all three and found the depth of knowledge and professionalism of 4IRE to be the best.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Over the course of 4 weeks, they illicited key requirements about our product and eventual integration with the dapp and DAO. They delivered a concise and effective report with clear recommendations on the build stage.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Their blockchain specialist, lead developer and solution architect were our key contacts. Their CTO was also present in many of the meetings. The meetings were well run and provided us with clarity on key details of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have a good understanding of the NFT mint stage of our project which will be implemented at a future date.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everything was fine, we communicated through email, Slack and Google meet. 4IRE were prompt in answering questions through all of the listed channels.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We found their blockchain specialist and CTO to be very professional and have a very deep understanding of the subject matter. They understood our company's business model and requirements very well.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

This project had many differing levels of difficulty which may not have always required a senior developer for the simpler stage.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO and co-founder of ARterra. We build fan engagement software for the esports and gaming industry. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with 4IRE?

Originally, we outsourced our code and it wasn’t a good experience. The code was extremely messy, we weren’t meeting deadlines, and things were only roughly patched together. As a result, we brought on 4IRE to help us organize the code. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

4IRE has organized and cleaned up our code while executing our vision. We’re built on the NEAR blockchain, and we’re using Kubernetes, AWS, Docker, and IPFS for storage. We also use Terraform

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a total of seven people from 4IRE. The team is composed of a project manager, two frontend developers, two backend developers, a blockchain developer, and a designer. 

How did you come to work with 4IRE?

Our team found 4IRE through one of our contacts within the NEAR protocol. They received good reviews from the NEAR blockchain team. Hiring them became a no-brainer when we told them our goals and listened to how they wanted to scope out the project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $400,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in May 2021, and the partnership is ongoing. We’re bringing 1–2 in-house developers into our team, but we plan to keep 4IRE on board for as long as they want to stick around.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

For success metrics, we check whether we complete tasks on time. Our combined team with 4IRE has been great at hitting our target times every sprint. At the end of each two-week sprint, we’ve not only executed the code but also put it under QA. Simply put, 4IRE has done an excellent job of sticking to our timelines.

Given the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, some of 4IRE’s members have been displaced. As a result, we’ve had to postpone everything to give them some time. Even so, their resources are still trying to work to the point that we’ve had to ask them to keep themselves safe. In other words, they’re truly diligent when it comes to timelines, and that’s our number one success metric.

How did 4IRE perform from a project management standpoint?

4IRE’s project managers are great. We’ve started with Victoria (Head of Delivery), and she’s been fantastic. She’s been promoted, so we now work with Ivan (Senior Project Manager), who’s also great.

We use Slack to communicate and a couple of Atlassian products — Confluence and Jira — to keep everything organized. Because of these tools, we’ve planned our sprints together effectively. We’ve had open visibility, which is also crucial. Overall, their project management has been great, and it’s truly easy to work with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In our space, developing a decentralized app is tough. A lot of teams say that they can do it — 4IRE not only can accomplish this; they also have a relationship with the protocol on which they’re building the app. 

That kind of relationship is critical for us, and it builds trust. When things change on the blockchain side, 4IRE is already ahead of the trends instead of reactively coding to catch up. They’re ahead of anything in terms of optimizing our code, ensuring it’s aligned with any new standard. For instance, when they see that a certain ecosystem is blowing up, they stay on top of it and add developers that are fluent in that ecosystem. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. Everything is going quite well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start the engagement with a full scope of how you see your product. Then, let 4IRE figure out the best way to make it happen. Don’t go in with any preconceived notions of how things should happen. Go in with a 30,000-foot view of your goals, and then let the team do the project planning and use their creativity to figure out how to best tie the project pieces together.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Media company developing a slate of Film projects. At the same time, exploring Blockchain and investigating solutions that can help empower independent film companies. Founder - Director

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 4IRE, and what were your goals?

Carry out a feasibility study, architecture and design of a new utility crypto token to ascertain whether this is technically possible; understand timescales and costs associated with developing the minimum viable product.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Explore a number of blockchain solution providers - met with a few to understand their experience. Ultimately it boiled down to experience and the "people" we would be working with.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had a kick off meeting followed by a number of workshops to discuss our goals and objectives. This included what we envisaged to be core for a MVP. The team delivered use cases and mock-ups/wireframes for our product to discuss and also flush out further requirements.

A number of collaboration tools were used to enable working across three timezones. UK, Ukraine and California. The team were very flexible.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project manager, business analyst and solutions architect were our point of contact throughout. A designer also worked behind the scenes. Furthermore, the CEO was always accessible and reachable.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We are now looking at proceeding with the development and are also looking at how we could grow the initial idea/concept further. In parallel, we are are exploring funding opportunities.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We had weekly meetings along with ad-hoc meetings, sometimes at very short notice. The team was very flexible in accommodating us - especially as we are based across UK and California.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their openness and willingness to help us achieve our vision. Beyond this, their drive to help us succeed by connecting us with other potential partners from legal through to marketing.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No. They were super efficient, friendly and driven to ensure the project succeeds.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a BDM at a software development company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 4IRE LABS, and what were your goals?

Our goal was to create a cross-border payment app with intuitive design to enable businesses and individuals to transfer money internationally. We needed to scale our team, so we turned to 4ire Labs to take care of the development process and implement our idea.

SOLUTION

How did you select 4IRE LABS and what were the deciding factors?

We selected from a number of blockchain development companies. During the selection process, we were referred by our friend who already collaborated with 4ire Labs and was impressed by the quality of their service and project management.

We mainly chose them because of their expertise in blockchain development and senior blockchain engineers.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

• Software architecture solution for the blockchain-based cross border system on Quorum blockchain
• Technologies justification including deployment model, 3rd party integrations, and database model
• Detailed project roadmap and estimation
• UX/UI design for the web application
• MVP development of the web app, so the partner bank could provide the EMI license (including the admin dashboard)

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had a dedicated project manager, QA, Blockchain Solution Architect, full-stack engineer, and UX/UI designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

With the help of 4ire Labs, we've managed to build an easy, transparent, and highly secure solution for sending payments overseas. They used advanced blockchain technology to process global payments in no time at substantially lower costs.

We opted for blockchain as it eliminates multiple intermediaries that participate in traditional cross-border money transfers.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

I can say that their project management is on the level. They are very organized and communicate professionally. We explained what we wanted to accomplish and the terms, and they divided the work into sprints.

It worked very well as we had some freedom to make changes during the development process. We regularly communicated with their project manager and the team via Skype or Slack to check on the project stage, set a new sprint, or regulate matters on budget and deadlines.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The 4ire Labs team engineers displayed an effort to produce quality code, react to the occurring issues and changes professionally and efficiently, and deliver a strong product on time. Their workflow was smooth and they tried their best to be available whenever we needed their assistance.

I think that their focus and commitment were vital to our project success.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We are more than satisfied with the project results. They have refined their processes to be near-optimal and comfortable to work with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Co-Founder and CEO of a company that focuses on genetic data sharing between researchers in genomics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 4IRE LABS, and what were your goals?

I hired 4ire Labs to help construct a demo that was to be built on NEAR Protocol which could demonstrate the fundamentals of genetic file sharing using blockchain tech.

My goal was to use this as a good foundation to build the future platform as well as use the demo developed to demonstrate to investors of the feasibility of the platform.

SOLUTION

How did you select 4IRE LABS and what were the deciding factors?

I decided 4ire Labs because they offered a very reasonable price for development of this initial demo while most other companies I consulted were not within our budget.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had a few kick-off meetings to lay out the framework of the goals of the project. Once there was a clear understanding of what needed to be done, the development team layed out "user stories" which were essential requirements desired for the platform.

The project consist edof three parts - Marketplace smart contract on Near blockchain written with Rust, dApp in VueJs and backend in NodeJs. The development team regularly scheduled meetings to give updates on progress that week.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project manager was the main point of contact with two additional software engineers that assisted with much of the development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

After I was given access to the demo locally, 100% percent of people I pitched to, were amazed by the quality of the project.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We had meetings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to go over progress updates. We also used Slack as our main mean of communication within the team. All code was also uploaded to Github so that I was able to review it as well.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I am just overall very impressed with the quality of the project, and how professional it is. When I was working on running it locally they were also very willing to walk me through the required steps in order set up the proper configuration. They definitely have a highly skilled team.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

There were some bugs initially, but that comes with the development process of any project. They quickly fixed those.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I an coo of maitres and we are an app based in Sweden but planing on expansion in Europe within a few years. We are like Uber but for restaurants, Bokning engine and primary a payment System

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire 4IRE LABS?

Development and maintain

What were your goals for this project?

Same as above

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I was not a part of the initial project unfortunately but some previous colleagues had experience with them from before

Describe the project in detail.

Developing and building our app from scratch and making the project better and constant maintaining the features and developing new add-ons

What was the team composition?

It’s been changing throughout the time but mainly 2 full-time developers. Now we have a cto and a full time backend developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We are very happy with our team and our outcomes. Especially with our cto who is brilliant and leaning the project to the fullest

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective thanks to Oleg

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The close contact to the team and our organizer and their flexibility and constantly being available

Are there any areas for improvement?

Of course but that has mostly to do with language barriers