This week at Hamza Labs, we’re advancing a range of initiatives to enhance our platform and grow our community, guided by clear goals for each project. From expanding cross-chain, bitcoin, and fiat payment options to enabling seamless seller onboarding and discount code functionality, our Dev Team is driving technical innovation. Meanwhile, our marketing and community efforts are focused on educating users, generating buzz through campaigns like Hamza Crypto-tips, and building trust through homepage improvements. Investment and deal-making efforts are progressing with strategic meetups and AI-driven outreach, while a new SEO Improvement project aims to boost our site’s visibility. Despite challenges like balancing maintenance tasks and gaining investor traction, we’re committed to delivering user-friendly solutions and fostering community engagement. Here’s a detailed breakdown of our project updates and goals for the week.

Cross-chain & Bitcoin & Fiat Payments

Goal: To allow easier support of new EVM chains (without deploying contracts to those chains) with cross-chain settlement to escrow on Optimism, enable users to pay with bitcoin and other specific non-EVM chains, and offer payment options without requiring a browser wallet.

The Dev Team has been focusing on maintenance and consolidation following the recent release of our cross-chain and bitcoin payment systems. While progress on bitcoin integration was limited last week due to competing tasks like bug fixing and miscellaneous maintenance, these are not significant obstacles. The team is on track to deliver a feature-complete bitcoin solution by the end of this week, with a planned release in early June.

Discount Codes

Goal: To allow the use of store-specific discount codes on the site for percentage or dollar amount discounts and enable sellers to create and manage their own discount codes in the admin panel.

This project is ready to move into live testing, marking a significant milestone for the Dev Team. With no obstacles reported, the team is poised to proceed smoothly. If testing reveals no issues, the next steps will involve expanding support for various discount code variations to enhance user engagement and flexibility on the platform.

Seller Onboarding – Dev Team

Goal: To enable sellers to onboard and create their own stores with minimal friction and no assistance, and to allow sellers to easily add and edit product listings independently.

The Dev Team’s Seller Onboarding project is also ready for live testing, reflecting the team’s efficiency in preparing this feature for deployment. No obstacles are currently hindering progress. If testing goes well, the project will transition into maintenance mode, allowing the team to focus on other priorities while ensuring a seamless onboarding experience for sellers.

Homepage Improvement

Goal: To display more products on the homepage in an orderly, digestible manner, make the site feel more alive, exciting, interesting, and comprehensible to buyers, and enhance its trustworthiness.

The Homepage Improvement project, led by Luciano, did not have specific progress updates reported last week regarding progress, obstacles, or timelines. The team is likely in the planning or early development phase, aligning efforts with the newly defined goals to create a more engaging and trustworthy homepage. We anticipate more details in the coming weeks.

HNS Chat

Goal: To enable customers to contact sellers directly about specific orders and allow sellers to receive and respond to customer messages.

The HNS Chat project, managed by the Dev Team, lacked specific progress updates last week. No progress, obstacles, or projected timelines were reported, suggesting that the team may be prioritizing other tasks or preparing for upcoming work aligned with these goals. We expect further developments to be shared in future updates.

Seller Onboarding – Customer Success

Goal: To support self-onboarding of quality sellers with high-quality listings.

Jose’s Customer Success team has successfully onboarded the New York Bar store, with Global From Asia and The Living Crystal lined up next. The main obstacle is a lack of new information from other sellers in the onboarding pipeline, but this is not a significant barrier. Jose plans to follow up with these sellers this week to keep the onboarding process moving forward in line with the goal of supporting quality seller onboarding.

Venezuelan Campaign

Goal: To generate organic buyers within the Venezuelan community, gather feedback from buyers, and educate people about crypto.

Jose’s VZ Campaign is expanding its scope to include broader crypto education topics within our Telegram community, fostering greater engagement among Venezuelan users. The team has connected with an influencer to discuss Muney, an app for exchanging USDT/USDC with USD cash, and launched a Bitcoin Pizza Day promotion. With no obstacles reported, the campaign is set to continue driving community growth and awareness.

Decom Talks

Goal: To educate people, generate buzz, and create a community.

The Decom Talks on Twitter Spaces were paused last week due to a lack of new onboarded sellers, prompting Jose’s team to consider reducing these talks to once per month until seller onboarding accelerates. However, the team is exploring new media outreach avenues, including the Hamza Crypto-tips (English) and Crypto-tips de Hamza (Spanish) YouTube shorts and reels, with three new videos published last week, gaining seven subscribers and over 700 views. A Bitcoin Pizza Day promotion was also rolled out for the English-speaking Telegram DECOM Community. With no obstacles, the team plans to produce more Hamza Crypto-tips content this weekend to further these goals.

Investment Hunt

Goal: No specific goal was provided in the updated spreadsheet, so the focus remains on securing investment opportunities.

Mike’s Investment Hunt efforts are gaining momentum, with a Uniswap meetup scheduled for Wednesday (details at https://lu.ma/wcxzvxzf) and a contact suggesting exploration of the IDG incubator program. The main obstacle is insufficient traction to attract investors, but Mike plans to discuss a potential grant with Uniswap and explore opportunities with Pudgy Penguins’ abstract chain and Sonium (Sony’s L2) this week.

Dealmaker

Goal: To gauge interest and prove that investment is warranted.

Mike’s Dealmaker project is advancing with the creation of an AI lead generation outreach avatar (documented at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1scnKQlROYb-ltAFUHJYt5E6aWUDNalWhu112eNszbsw/edit?tab=t.0). Team members Anne, Manly, and Luciano have been onboarded to assist, and outreach has been made to 10-15 contacts. The primary obstacle is setting up the AI lead generation system, but results are expected by early to mid-next week as the system is refined to align with the goal of gauging interest.

Buyer and Seller Acquisition/Management

Goal: To increase activity on product pages, boost cart actions (add to cart), grow the number of unique, repeat, and active buyers, increase the number of sellers, and enhance the number of high-quality product listings.

Anne’s Buyer and Seller Acquisition/Management project did not have specific progress updates last week regarding progress, obstacles, or timelines. The team is likely in the early stages of planning or coordination to meet these ambitious goals, and we look forward to more details in future updates as efforts to grow our buyer and seller base progress.

SEO Improvement

Goal: To improve the SEO score of the site and fix any potential SEO-related issues or imperfections.

The SEO Improvement project, newly added and owned by TBD, has no specific progress, obstacles, or timelines reported this week, as it appears to be in the initial planning phase. The team will focus on enhancing the site’s SEO score and addressing any technical imperfections to improve visibility and user acquisition in the coming weeks.

Conclusion

This week’s updates and newly defined goals highlight Hamza Labs’ commitment to technical innovation and community growth. The Dev Team is advancing cross-chain, bitcoin, and fiat payment options, discount codes, and seller onboarding, all aimed at creating a seamless user experience. Jose’s team is driving crypto education and community engagement through campaigns and media outreach, while Mike’s efforts focus on securing investment and partnerships. The new SEO Improvement project sets the stage for greater site visibility. As we move into the week of May 25 – May 31, we’re excited to align our efforts with these goals, deliver feature-complete solutions, and continue building a vibrant, engaged community.

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: May 25 – 31, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Cross chain payments will make its first deploy – which will allow us to do payments from fiat to bitcoin to solana – much more flexibility. 

Coupon codes (many on the marketing and BD side are excited for this) is going through final testing

Many new storefronts and products are being deployed. Working towards are more streamlined and seamless vendor onboarding process.

On the BD side we are getting the lead generation going for outreach on the dealmaker space, also the automotive section, and keeping it warm with stores awaiting going live.

We had a focus group last week and learned a lot of insights about usability as well as hesitations some in the space have to make transactions.

We are in the “messy middle” right now but are pushing along, getting some organic sales and improving as we go. This is the startup grind I would like to be part of, and it is beautiful. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: May 18 – 24, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

We will have an ecommerce seller meetup Tuesday May 13 to engage the local community and network. 

Thursday we will have a focus group for our insight and also get insight from web3 savvy users on how to best utilize Hamza.

We are starting to test / execute this week on “Dealmaker Space” a B2B front end utilizing Decom.network and making a small BD team for this exercise.

Many features been building – need to execute on the coupon codes. Bitcoin payment. 

Team is leaner now, and restructuring and streamlining processes as we move into the second half of 2025. Years are  flying by here.

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: May 11 – 17 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Our main goals right now:

Cross-chain & bitcoin payments – this is a core feature we are so excited to deploy, but will allow payments to be made anywhere – Bitcoin. EVM, fiat, and then flow into the smart contract escrow and dispute system. 

Discount codes – this is the early stage beginnings to a full blown affiliate system, but we are starting with a coupon code / discount code system so we can give the merchants ability to create them and 

Seller onboarding – making it more automatic and streamlined. Easier said than done. 

Investment search – Mike has collected a ton of feedback, it is creating pivots and spin offs.

Dealmaker.space early stage front end development. Mike is approved by foundation to put resources from BD / his side to build this out as a high value transaction service using Decom framework and infra.

Marketing, twitter spaces – Anne and Jose are working more independently now and working on organic growth with some small paid X ads. 

Venezuela market – excited to support Jose more on his local initiatives. Feels this is a needed platform in the market there.

We are in the “messy middle” of a startup, extending runway, working on a few testing angles to get best product market fit, and doing the hard things to get ahead. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: May 4 – 10 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Singapore is a compact and concentrated place of investors and entrepreneurs. Will definitely need to spend more time here for business development.

A lot of feedback has been that is the market interested to buy “standard products” with crypto that is at a low total order value. We are discussing higher value and more full service touchpoint as a market test. 

On the internal team side, we will have our month end “Kumbaya” call on this Monday April 28 (rescheduled) and make some announcements and transparent discussions about what we have been learning and how we are adjusting in this market. If you’re on the team, make sure you attend it.

Product side we are discussing the new features to build and making priority – fiat on-ramp, other blockchain payments, affiliate system, more SEO friendly, and more. 

Mike will be in Canton Fair, China this coming week for seller networking and insights. 

Look forward to continuing to find the right positioning and keeping ears to the ground. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: April 27 – May 3, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

On the development side, we are close to releasing a few features – cross chain payments (starting with Bitcoin) – which will be an amazing foundation for us to be able to accept payments in pretty much any form and settle on our base EVM chain. 

The second one is coupon codes, which is the beginning of the affiliate system. We will allow the third party sellers to be able to create these coupons to allow their affiliates to promote their products and earn a commission (in crypto) for the sales they bring. 

This can spin into a massive new affiliate system, but we are starting small and seeing the response. There is so many features and adding to build – and we need to prioritize and focus.

The main functions of this platform is to make it easy to buy and sell physical products with crypto. This means we need to improve the UI/UX of web3, and the website itself. In a way we are in our own way, or the industry itself. 

The next couple weeks we are prioritizing various major features to build, re-assessing our marketing and outreach strategy (have a few markets and channels to explore).

As stated in previous week updates, we are in a “grind” phase, in a middle phase where we are finding our fit and building the foundation of the community. Still a lot of exciting leads and directions and being in a high impact high risk environment is where a startup should be!

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: April 21 – 26 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Yet we are still so early. And build and preach on we can.

Mike’s speech from the SEA Blockchain week RektSurvivor event was published and you can watch on our youtube here 

From this speech, Mike tried a different angle for the presentation – rather than hype and talk all about the good – he shared some of the struggles on getting buyer adoption and engaged with the Q&A in an open format. From this it seemed much more effective, getting a lot of support, willingness to help, introductions to other projects. 

The path to mass adoption will not be a cookie cutter format like any other protocol in the past. The rules have changed, and we must adjust. One strategy we are implementing is adding more advisors and agencies who are truly aligned with us and willing to grind!

Grind mode on.

The best part is the team is still rock solid and believing in what we are building. I for one am willing to “die on this rock” and know this is the future. Market conditions and stubbornness of using “harder web3” than web2 is just a temporary concept.

The development team is close to coming out with cross chain settlement, allowing bitcoin payment, Solana, account abstraction, and more. 

We are becoming the hub, the base layer for commerce. And this is not an easy feat and know it will be a long, hard road. Will you join in? 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: April 14 – 19 appeared first on Hamza Market.

As we are fundraising, we are not simply asking for investment anymore – we are asking for community support. As Mike spoke at a RektSurvivor (lol) side event, at the end – the audience asked “what are you looking for – besides investment” – and it got vulnerable and real. Mike shared that we need more help with making the buyer onboarding easier, and many in the audience made suggestions, added his telegram, made group introductions, and gave a ton of input after the speaking session.

This is what it is about – not a VC world where it is pump and dumps. It is about building a product and an infrastructure that works and people need, engaging and building an audience and going organic and grassroots.

We have been making these adjustments and are starting to make engagement contracts with individuals and agencies who can help us with this alignment.

On the product side, we are getting closer to supporting bitcoin and other cross chain payments. We realize we are not about “Connecting wallet” as the first step, but instead “creating an account” web2 style, and then inside it will be various forms of payment.

Also excited once coupon codes are ready as we can engage the community and have coupons issued to influencers or anyone for that matter to help spread the word.

More sellers interested in onboarding, and more alliances and partnerships pending.

Calling this “grind mode” – and this is the time when the true products and teams emerge.

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: April 7 – 12 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Business development continues to progress, last week Mike was in a high level ecommerce mastermind with top Amazon sellers. Collecting feedback on the thought process on them listing their products on Hamza, with the main point being sellers look at marketplaces as ROI on their time of making the store any advertising fees to how many sales they will/are getting. Also how difficult is it to learn and import /add their product catalog. 

This week Mike is attending the Bangkok SEABlockchain week, which was cancelled over the weekend due to the aftermath of the earthquake. While there was fear of aftershocks and other after effects, many of the side events planned are still happening and our Wednesday Decom Night (Mike’s birthday party) is still happening as normal. 

Already Mike has attended a few side events and made solid contacts, those serious about the space still have come out to the various SEAblockchain week events.

Development side is making steady progress. Seller side continues to tweak and improve, and working towards cross-chain payments (bitcoin, solana) and coupon code and other features. 

We are in a flow, with our fundraising round coming along and engaging in various conversations. Building, we have a product, are listening to the market, iterating, and finding our place in the market.

Truly believe what we are building is a valid and needed project to the world – to empower buyers and sellers to own their data, money, and future. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: March 30 – April 5 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Last week Global From Asia had a webinar sharing about the future of AI and blockchain, with an offer to onboard a select group of the community to be early sellers on Hamza market. There is a lot of unknowns in the “web2” merchant community about blockchain – and in the audience of 20+ only a handful said they knew what MetaMask is.

Also we onboarded BigWater air purifiers, our first DePIN project which had some special technical requests and requirements since it is a pre-sale contract. Lots of coordination with the BigWater team, our business development team, and the technical team. Great collaboration and communication flows being put in place.

Which goes to our direction on multi-chain and account login. We are reviewing the requirement of connecting wallet in order to see other menu items (currency, chain), and instead looking to a more traditional account creation flow and then having connect wallet.

This coming week, more work on multi-chain, coupons on the technical side.

This Thursday will be our fourth Decom Talks X (twitter) spaces, check us out on x.com/hamzadecom1 for that.

On the business development side for Hamza, this week Mike is flying to Hua Hin where there will be a seller mastermind. Will further show updates of Hamza and work to get feedback and onboard more.

Next week is Southeast Asia Blockchain week, with a Decom night (birthday party) planned to further connect with the web3 community. Yet the idea of Decom night is to invite the web2 merchant community together, and this is what the plan is for April 2 Decom night.

As you can see above in the various activities we are doing, it is a mixture of web2 (seller/merchant) and web3 (blockchain events, decom night).

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: March 23 – 29, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Last week we had our Governance Town Hall on Monday – a small and intimate conversation about the latest iterations in the white paper, pitch presentation, and where we are as a team and community.

Later last week we had our third Decom Talks on Twitter, featuring a new vendor and DePIN project BigWater. The founder shared his story and the budding project’s early days and preparing us for launch this coming week. 

Our development team is focused on two main parts – further hardening and smoothening the UI/UX flow as a top priority, with the seller admin side highest on that list. Second is a new expansion of accepting nonEVM tokens – starting with Bitcoin, and then moving to Solana. 

This is the long term vision of Hamza marketplace and the DECOM protocol – to be a governance and settlement layer for transactions across all blockchains. 

On the business development side, we have had multiple calls with investors, potential partners, and are interested in signing some agreements this coming week to get closer to the seed round closing this summer. 

We have never been more excited about what we are building – with the exponential growth of AI now, we see blockchain as an obvious choice for the technology stack once the dust settles. Having autonomous agents using blockchain is a superior to the current centralized database web2 stack.

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: March 17 – 22, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

• Fundraising – for our seed round, gathering various interest and points.
• DePIN / products – we are leaning towards focusing in the DePIN product category. (Will share below) 
• Product development – what used to be #1 for the majority of last year, is now 3 on the list.

Fundraising: Putting together a seed round.

Market conditions could be better, but we have a solid list of interest and looking to close a bridge round with private investors by mid Summer this year. On track for that. Lots of feedback and enhancements to our pitch deck, offer, and tokenomics, but positive and part of the process.

DePIN: Stands for decentralized physical infrastructure network

These are protocols and products that have ways for the community to run nodes to provide supply to the protocol and earn rewards and income from the demand side who uses that supply. Many have hardware devices and we are working with 1 project as a use case for later this month. More information to come shortly once more confirmed.

Product development: Working on cross chain payments

As more and more people ask for Bitcoin, Solana, and other chain payments, we are working on creative solutions for this in the short and long term. Also so much to do on the seller admin side, building a 2 sided multi vendor marketplace is a massive undertaking and we are nearly there on the seller side functions for sellers to onboard and list on their own. 

Exciting times  more excited than ever as we have an amazing team, product, and industry that is developing before our eyes. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: March 9 – 15, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Taking the feedback from users (buyers wanting to talk to sellers / ask questions about products), sellers wanting more flexibility and capabilities, investors with the long term features and vision – we are adapting and growing.

Various new elements are being integrated to the roadmap and story, after an amazing time in Consensus Hong Kong with Mike, and lots of input from the community from various calls. 

We are in talks with a DePIN product about their product launch and various feature requests they have.

The AI narrative is still strong, and we believe the blockchain is the superior infrastructure for the new agentic commerce. 

On the development side, the hardening sprint is winding down, as more seller admin features are being added and front end UI/UX. Next is more on the account abstraction as well as token integration. 

On the business development side, we are getting the flow of twitter spaces, seller onboarding, discussing with new chat integrations, and more.

On the governance side, new and updates tokenomics, white papers, presentations are coming out this week. 

The best part is we are vibing as a team and community and know we are building something for the future of commerce and the world.

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: March 2 – 8, 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

We are not just building a single application, we are building an ecosystem and a whole new way of doing commerce in the future – web3, blockchain, ai, all that jazz.

Setting up many followup calls this week with the team and partners, we will be forging ahead. 

Also back to the 2 calls this week – doing biweekly – the Town Hall (Monday on discord) and Decom talk (Thursday on X) to share the learnings and engage the community at large. 

One of the biggest takeaways from Consensus – we are building real utility on web3. The trend of meme seems to be fading with the latest scams of LIBRA and the aftermath of it. 

We see the utility of blockchain, and projects using that, as those who will succeed in the long term. 

This week – the last week of February 2025 – most of the team is “back at the office” (minus Alex, 1 more week away)  and we will have a lot of internal calls as well as community calls, and 1:1 followup calls – as we build out Hamza and the future of ecommerce – aka decom. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: Feb 24 – Mar 1 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.

Last week, we hosted 2 community online events – the Open House kickoff for the Hamza discord community hall.  And then the X Twitter space later in the week for the Decom talk. 

We are calling them “gears” that flow as the water of the Hamza river flow. Doing these sessions helps keep the flow going of users, community, developers, and BD. We are looking to do them biweekly (every 2 weeks) and the week in between posting the recordings, transcripts, and insights of what we learned and shared. 

On the development side it has been a hardening sprint, testing the load and the pushing of boundaries and security. 

This coming week, Mike is heading to Consensus in Hong Kong to hyper network and connect with existing and new investors and partners for Hamza. Also meeting various partners and team members. 

John is back from a travel and will be catching back up, as we decide the development team structure and growth and direction. 

We are adjusting our pitch deck and offer based on feedback from legal counsel, investors, and users alike. We are keeping an open mind on the right product market fit that helps create the next stage of commerce using blockchain technology. 

The post Hamza Labs Weekly Map Update: Feb 16 – 22 2025 appeared first on Hamza Market.