Introduction
Subscriptions are one of the oldest business models in the world. The subscription model has been used by many businesses and services. It’s a way for users to pay a set amount each month for a particular service or product. The subscription model is still being used today because it works so well. But in the past, it was difficult to implement and even harder to manage. Today, thanks to blockchain technology and smart contracts, we can change how subscriptions work forever!
Simple and Secure Subscription API that drives your users to much better experiences
Subscription management is a pain point for most businesses. Regardless of the type or size of company, subscription management is difficult to implement and use. It’s not secure either, which means that there have been numerous cases where user data has been compromised through various means including poor security practices, malicious actors stealing credentials and more.
Secret Subscription solves these problems with its simple yet powerful API which allows businesses to create plans based on their needs, then update them at any time without having to worry about any of the implementation details. With just one simple contract call from within your dApp code base you can integrate this technology into any project effortlessly!
Subscription Stream Technology
Subscription Streaming is a new way of thinking about how subscriptions work. With Subscription Streaming, you get paid continuously over a finite period of time as users utilise your application. This means that when a user stops their subscription mid-way through, you still earn revenue from everything they used while they were subscribed.
The main benefit here is that you don’t have to worry about billing cycles or large upfront costs. Instead, you can focus on building great software and improving the value proposition for new customers—which will lead directly to more revenue!
What benefits are there for the user?
- Central Dashboard
The user will be able to monitor all of their subscriptions on a centralised dashboard. They can upgrade or cancel them with the click of one button—instead of having to jump through hoops, they just have one place for everything!
- Keeps Data Private
With secret contracts, no one but you can see your payment data or personal information- making for more secure transactions than traditional payment systems used for subscriptions such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.
This also allows us to offer a more efficient service because it doesn’t require third parties like banks or credit card companies who often charge high fees for this kind of service. You get faster and cheaper transactions when using Secret Subscription!
Why is this developed on Secret Network rather than other blockchains?
The Secret Network is a blockchain with a focus on privacy and security. Traditional blockchains leave a public data trail of users’ information, which can be accessed by anyone with access to the internet. Wherever you go and whatever you purchase, there will always be a record on the blockchain ledger.
This can be dangerous if sensitive data like your identity or credit card information are leaked onto these ledgers. Information stored in traditional blockchains can also be used for malicious purposes or sold off to third parties without your consent.
The team behind Secret Network is working to develop a blockchain with privacy and security in mind. They want to make sure that their network can be used for all types of transactions while still protecting users’ personal data.
Why Now
According to some research, the average person has between 12 and 17 subscriptions to various products and services they use — but often forgets about them or fails to cancel them once their usefulness outruns those paid-for relationships. An all-in-one subscription management dashboard and subscription API that offers very minimal fees for dApps solves both problems—the developers wanting to build a stress-free experience, and users getting back control over services they use.
The User Experience
User experience is paramount to the success of a product. Marketing, design and even technology can be secondary—it’s the difference between a mediocre forgettable product and one that becomes an industry standard. It’s how customers interact with a particular brand or company, and it drives their purchasing decisions in the long run. The key to success in any business is getting your customers addicted—in a good way! This is why one of the key considerations when developing Secret Subscriptions is providing the best user experience possible.
The Developer Experience
A great developer experience is critical to attracting and retaining developers. A bad developer experience can break our service, just as much as a poor user interface—so it’s important that we think about how we can make the Developer Experience (just like User Experience) good for everyone who uses or builds on top of Secret Subscriptions.
The developer experience is about making it easy for developers to get started with your product. It’s about helping them quickly understand how things work, and providing them with the tools they need to be successful. The developer experience can be broken down into two major categories: documentation and tooling, and it’s important to pay attention to both of them. Documentation is the first step in helping developers get started with your product. It should be clear, well-organised, and easy to read so that developers can understand how things work. This includes any guides, tutorials or reference material that you provide for your users. The second category is tooling, this includes writing SDKs that allow interfacing with Secret Subscriptions as easily as possible, while also providing a good demo app that shows how the SDK can be used. A great developer experience will help your users get started quickly and easily, without having to spend hours reading documentation or working through tutorials, for those developers who are impatient and just want to get things done 
What dApps are we attempting to integrate with?
We plan to make your Secret Subscription compatible with as many dApps and applications as possible. Some examples include: (we haven’t talked to these apps yet, but here’s what we’re thinking)
- Working with ALTER to allow Secret Subscriptions as a payment method
- Working with FINA and StarShell to integrate the Secret Subscriptions dashboard into their wallets
If you’re a dApp developer make sure to reach out!
Who is the team behind this?
The development team is anonymous because we want you to focus on the work we’re doing, not who did it.
We believe that when you’re working, you should be doing your best work and not worrying about who’s going to get credit for it. That’s why we don’t discuss our team dynamics or give out names—we don’t want you to waste time wondering who did what.
We also believe that when people see their work credited to an individual, they may feel entitled to that recognition, and then they may not do their best work anymore. We want the community to feel like they’re working together toward a shared goal: making Secret Network better.
The Secret Network community values privacy, and so do we.
How much will it cost to make Secret Subscriptions a reality?
The current plan is that the first version of Secret Subscriptions will be developed in three months’ time at an estimated cost of $35k-40k USD (which will all be paid entirely in SCRT), but in order to make it more palatable this will be split into 4 milestones all of which will be submitted on chain independently AFTER the milestone has been completed; if the community is not satisfied with our work, we don’t get paid. This is a very important part of the project, as it ensures that we are held accountable for our work and creates a clear incentive for us to deliver something above and beyond the expectations of the community.
The development of Milestone 1 will start one week after the creation of this forum thread, and should take 2 weeks to complete. Once it is finished we will present our work to you (the community) for approval before putting a proposal up on chain, and then start working on Milestone 2 in a similar manner. There are two reasons why we’re doing this: one, it gives the community a chance to hold us accountable for delivering something great. Two, if no incentive were built in to make sure that we deliver greatness instead of mediocrity—then there would be nothing stopping us from just delivering mediocre work and claiming our pay.
We believe that if Secret Subscriptions proves to be successful, other projects will copy our model, and this thread can serve as a template for future efforts by others. We call this model “The Community Driven Development Model”.
This thread will be updated periodically with the progress of development, and we hope that you will enjoy following it as much as we enjoy making it!
All code and other resources will be released under an open-source license (GNU GPLv3). This means that if you are a developer or designer, you’ll be able to use our work as inspiration for your own projects!
Milestone 1: Creating initial design and documentation ($3,000)
This will include sketching the User UI/UX flow as well as the usage flow for the developer, so we can make sure that the flow makes sense and is easy to use. It will also include a high-level design spec of how the back-end API will work, so it can be looked at by the community for feedback and possible improvements.
Milestone 2: POC ($15,000)
This will include a working demo of the UI/UX flow, as well as an MVP version of the back-end API, so we can start testing it out with real users and we can start getting feedback on places where improvements or modifications are necessary.
Milestone 3: Production release ($15,000)
This will include a full version of the front-end, the back-end API, as well as documentation on how to use it. This is the point where Secret Subscriptions is ready to be used in real applications and by real users.
Milestone 4: The icing on the cake ($2,000-$7,000)
This is the point where we will be able to add in a few extra features that were requested by our users. These include things like improving existing features, solving bugs and making Secret Subscriptions even more awesome. The final version of the platform will be released at Milestone 4, and this is when all our hard work pays off! Documentation for how to use it—as well as a getting started guide for developers—will also be included.
We intend to repay the community pool for all the money contributed for developing Secret Subscriptions, and thus will charge users a fee of 0.5% for using our Secret Subscriptions. This fee goes directly towards re-investing in more awesome applications on the Secret Network. We will also be looking for ways to reward users who have helped with the development by reporting bugs or giving feedback.
Conclusion
We believe that the above points have given you a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve with Secret Subscriptions, and how it benefits both users and developers. We are also very excited about this project because it is a great way for us to give back to the community. We hope you will join us in supporting Secret Subscriptions. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know!
