NICKEL Dispatch

Archives
Subscribe
Dec. 16, 2025, 6:18 p.m.

Beta is live

NICKEL Dispatch

The past few days have been stressful. I had a self-imposed deadline to launch NICKEL on December 15th but of course things came up (wrangling subscriptions with Stripe, waiting for maintenance to finish on my servers, &c). Many pages are still half-finished and helpful UX flourishes (like knowing when your avatar has been successfully uploaded) aren't implemented yet. So why launch? Because, now I have no choice but to hurry up and make NICKEL incredible. I need some sort of external pressure if I'm ever going to get anything done. Otherwise, it'll remain a side project and this is too cool to remain such.

People who were already signed up for the mailing list have accounts made for them on a secret Creator plan that comes with 5 GB storage for free, forever. If you want to kick the tires and/or help feature development (by telling me what sucks and what works), this mailing list is the way to go.

So what's next?

  • quicker update cadence (having incomplete things in the wild causes me psychic damage)
  • /explore page part 1
    • in a few days, loading that page will return a random public video from the API
  • those UX flourishes I mentioned earlier
  • video page updates
    • currently there's a static list under the info section...these should be real videos
    • the comment box is just for looks at the moment, just terrible
  • /explore page part 2
    • I'm super excited for this and it's never been done. I didn't want to just have an infinite scroll list of videos...we can do better.
  • wrangling with Stripe's API to add tipping/cash out functionality

Thank you to those who have been following along so far, more stuff cooking. Stay tuned.

— Paul

P.S. Looks like I changed stuff around in my roadmap? Oh well, haha! Here comes the mad dash to April/May launch! These months will fly by.


If you’re a Creator or aspiring to be one, let me know what you need in a platform (here’s my profile, if you want to see how the UI is shaping up). If you know a Creator, let them know about NICKEL! By signing up for the mailing list, you’re also on the waitlist (which makes you eligible for future perks).

Find us on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

You just read issue #3 of NICKEL Dispatch. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.

NICKEL
Powered by Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your newsletter.