bitsCrunch

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders of ONE / OFF, and we’re a company that’s basically trying to create an ecosystem for black artists, institutions, and art workers on the blockchain — specifically focusing on NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens).

What challenge were you trying to address with bitsCrunch?

One of the things that we wanted to do is create a database where we could automatically log and track market transactions. We hired bitsCrunch to help us build out an API that would be able to pull information by tracking an Etherium wallet address, and come up with all kinds of insights and analytics off of the data.

The other thing we wanted to do was use the data as a backend, to build out this marketplace that will hopefully allow collectors to easily discover the works of artists — while simultaneously giving the artists an opportunity to give their work a little more visibility.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re working with bitsCrunch to build out the database and API that allows us to scrape data from the block explorer, and pull the metadata associated with it. Additionally, we’re also working with them to create the frontend around the actual database that they’re helping build out, which is part of the second phase of the project and product we’re hoping to deliver.

What’s happening right now is the auditing of the database, where we check for bugs and clean up the product a bit. I’ve been able to export data to excel and it’s been in a clean enough format where I could quickly do an analysis on total sales, such as the available works of the artists and how much they’ve sold.

The next part they’re going to help us with is a quick dashboard for the database that’ll have automated charts and metrics at a glance — which will be really helpful. The biggest thing for us right now is the exportability of the database because there is a lot of general information that we can easily pull off from the data, which is great. We definitely like to leave room for experimentation and innovation.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with about 5–6 people, and our primary contact is the project manager.

How did you come to work with bitsCrunch?

The way we crossed paths was a little bit of a rabbit hole, but essentially, I came across a person that created their own database, which I was super interested in. I asked if he was willing to sell it or recreate it, but he wasn’t interested. Instead, he provided me this private Telegram group where there were a bunch of developers who were trying to create similar products.

I joined the telegram group and reached out saying I had a specific focus that was related to the product. I even said I was willing to spend money to try to have something built out — that’s when I got a direct message from bitsCrunch. It led to a series of introductions, phone calls, follow-ups, and talks about what we hoped to achieve. They talked about their own experience and demoed some of the other projects they’ve been working on in that space.

Based on those meetings, we found a high degree of confidence in their team, what they could do, and it just seemed like a good fit. That’s what ultimately led to the relationship. I wouldn’t say it was a traditional way of discovering them, but it definitely worked out.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested around $8,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe conversations started in January 2021, and our partnership is still ongoing.

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

While we don’t really have any metrics or statistics to demonstrate the impact of their work, my anecdotal feedback is that they’re really helpful and this partnership has definitely worked for us. What makes the process a little bit easier, is the ability to directly chat with them to address a problem or pose a question. They’ve just been great in terms of filling in the gaps between calls.

How did bitsCrunch perform from a project management standpoint?

We have five weekly calls, so that gives me the opportunity to see the updates, ask questions, review the product in real-time, and discuss different things. We also have a Telegram channel, so if anyone else from the team has any specific questions for us, we can easily address them there.

We use the chat to communicate in between meetings about what’s happening or if we need any clarification on something. Internally, we don’t have any project management tools, and that’s something that’s been really helpful working with the bitsCrunch team. This type of project isn’t really in our wheelhouse of expertise and we don’t have any experience in this realm. That’s why it’s been great having their team provide us with consultation and advisory on this project. 

We have our ideas about how we think the system should work or function, but it’s been helpful getting some of that additional feedback from them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Candidly, this is my first experience working with a provider on the tech side. However, I really appreciate their responsiveness and communication, as well as the speed of their delivery. They actually delivered the initial project ahead of schedule, which I think is really fantastic. Their flexible communication however is the most impressive, especially if we want to change or tweak something. They’re usually right there, ready and willing to take on that challenge or make that change.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At the moment, we’ve been very happy with the process so I don’t really have any negative feedback. The way that they’ve handled the communication has been really great, and they’re really proactive in reaching out to ask questions about the deliverables, whenever they need a little bit more help or guidance.

And in terms of how they’ve handled the project management as it relates to the flow and process of certain elements, it’s been a huge lift for us to have them on the team. We’ve been able to rely on them and trust them to build the project while we focus on the other parts of the business.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

One of the best ways to engage with them is to have your list of questions because, for those guys, more is less as it relates to information and questions. If you’re able to air out everything that you want and do it in a way that’s both clear and constructive, it’ll help you get the most with them. They’re super receptive and that’s also what they’re looking for as it helps them create a better product for you as a client.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Decentralized Community Brands. We ideate and build predictive analytics and artificial intelligence enhanced feature innovations in the blockchain space.

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

Non-fungible token markets have a major problem with forged content. Users can copy the content of a particular token, make an account that imitates the original creator and sometimes they are able to sell the forged content.

In order to combat scams like these; we set out to build a computer vision artificial intelligence model which can detect most conventional forms of plagiarized token conents.

How did you select bitsCrunch and what were the deciding factors?

I met Saravanan, Ajay and Vijay through the Here We Grow machine learning education platform for SingularityNet; we immediately realized that our goals and methodologies were well aligned.

This has lead us to a number of different collaborations in the AI and Blockchain spaces.

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

Well the model reiies on a database of indexed token metadata. This includes owner, creator, collection and content data. So we utilize the verified creator metadata tag to index content from verified creators.

Then we build a thumbprint of each particular piece of verified content that contains key point mapping data and some other proprietary data types.

Then we can easily compare any newly created token's content to the indexed "thumbprints" to determine if the new piece of content is actually forged, plagiarized and stolen content. All of this was accomplished with Python, SQL, openCV and Javascript.

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

I worked with the most of the technical team there and the CEO. That includes CEO Vijay Maharajan, Lead Devops Ajay Prashanth, Chief Data Scientist Saravanan Jaichandaran, and Data Scientist Ashok Varadharajan

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

The project was very successful, the model was very accurate and performed better than any other previously available solutions and immediately lead us to talks with a premier venture capital firm in the blockchain space about bringing this product to market.

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

The Bitscrunch team is very easy to get along with , very knowledgeable and helpful. Their easy going attitude is well tempered by their attention to process, workflow and detail. They set short scale deliverables timelines and delivered on-time.

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

The accuracy, speed and overall quality of the machine learning model they delivered was much higher than you would typically see in a proof-of-concept. It was much closer to a production ready model than I was expecting.

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

Overall I am very satisfied with our interactions, the speed and quality of our work together. I would have to put serious thought into the details of what areas they could improve upon.

We could have done the development in a private Github repository that would have been more my speed.