Recap: Public AMA - December 2025

Overlooking a snowy digital landscape, holiday music playing in the background - picture Discord dark mode with a handful of stragglers huddled together for warmth, all hunting for the one gift that truly matters: answers. And just like Santa sliding down the chimney on Christmas Eve, Veld arrived with a sack full of updates about what we’re shipping next.

Gather round readers, sit closer to the campfire, as I bring you a recap of our latest Public AMA with Top.gg's CEO Mike Veldsink.

“This year was about building the foundational blocks. Now we move onto the platform as a whole.”

This past year at Top.gg hasn't been perfect, in fact, some may say it has been a little rocky - a major platform rewrite in February caused some unavoidable downtime - but it has laid the groundwork for everything that follows.

In April, servers officially returned along with a completely rebuilt search system. Previously, search queries were running directly on an old database, but they now live on a dedicated database that's faster, more reliable, and able to return bigger and more varied results. It also means we're not just surfacing the "most voted" results every time. There's still a lot of work happening behind-the-scenes, especially around improving direct matches, but the direction is clear: more relevant, less rigid search.

Alongside this, the team launched analytics - which has unlocked a tremendous amount of insight into server activity, search behaviour, and performance. This has also made it possible to start showcasing what is active right now, which in turn gives huge potential for real-time discovery, but let's make it clear - we want to move into a direction where we are more proactive with discovery rather than simply reacting to what is already popular.

Overall, we are feeling optimistic: the groundwork is done, the trajectory looks good, and 2026 is where (we are hoping) everything comes together.

Let's Jump Into the Questions!

Q: Are there any statistics on who uses the new feature filters?

"We don't have a lot of stats on these yet, I do not think we actively track them, however, so far we have seen generally good reception."

Q: What bot types/categories are underrated or overrated in your opinion?

"Do you mean tags? Because I feel like tags right now are a little messy. I would like to clean up tags, but it is difficult because it can encapsulate different things under the same category, for example a server under "Fun" and a bot under the same tag, could be completely different. Or perhaps, the tag for "Gaming" for an Apex Legends bot, compared to a server that just happens to have an interest in gaming - these two don't have the same intention. So I'd like to take a look at this by pulling it apart, and turning it into something more personalised per platform."

Q: What advice would you give to new developers to help get niche bots out there?

"For new companies in general, I believe that the biggest thing you can do as a new product is growing out of your niche the moment you are able to capture that tiny dot of people. That small fraction will start talking about your product because it is specifically solving their problem and why your product is so important to them.

Let's say there is a game with clans, and your niche is to build a levelling bot that finds a way to gain experience by playing the game or supporting specific clans through Discord. By solving this problem in a specific community, you then have the potential for free growth as you become the "standard" for that fraction of people."

Q: With the knowledge and experience of maintaining a stable community from Top.gg, what advice do you have for aspiring indie developers looking to create a commercial project from zero and grow a stable community from it? Which aspects do you recommend developers to prioritize in this case? (This can be inside or outside of Discord.)

"I believe we can refer a little to the previous question, but you should really make sure that you can validate your product before you invest fully into it. Make a prototype, something quick created in a weekend, test it out with people who you are trying to reach with your products. If you are unable to validate, kill the project. Coming up with a great idea is going to take a lot of time, and sometimes it doesn't work out, so you need to understand when to kill a project."

Q: What is this? (The above image)

"Previously, Top.gg wanted to explore the crypto space, but that is no longer the case and it is an outdated visual. When servers were initially removed from the website, removing projects related to crypto was a side effect. It could've received better treatment, especially building it in a scalable way, but personally I do not think too much about crypto and the use case, and it currently is not part of Top.gg's plan. Perhaps in the future."

Q: What inspired Top.gg to be how it is now?

"Top.gg was initially a simple bot listings website, but it then transformed into a search and discovery platform for communities and applications. And now, we are pulling back by focusing on bots and servers and figuring out how we can build this into a viable product. I believe this year we have done pretty well with all the new features."

What's Next for Top.gg?

Introducing Top.gg's next product: a personalised directory of Roblox games.

This is something that the Top.gg team is particularly excited about, and it has been something that we have been working on for quite a while now. With all the foundational blocks that we have been putting together, our next product fits in smoothly and is our next step that separates us from providing just Discord Bots and Discord Servers.

The long-term goal is to allow projects to be linked across platforms. A server could list the bots or apps it uses, and a bot could show the servers or experiences it’s connected to - whether that’s Discord, Roblox, or others in the future.

Q: So, what steps are Top.gg taking to make this possible? Particularly around the safety of young children who will be using the website?

"Top.gg is committed to ensuring that we can provide a platform that is safe for all ages, and that harmful behaviour and content is identified before it grows and spreads out of control. We are investing heavily in new standards and policy towards the safeguarding of our users, particularly with an incoming influx of younger audiences. Therefore, until this happens and that we are confident that safety and quality benchmarks are met, there is no firm release date for this expansion."

Q: Is the Roblox listing the next feature in line, or are there other updates in line first?

"There are other things on the roadmap, for example, we are currently working on Webhooks 2.0, this is to support Discord server owners who have found it hard to reward users who vote for them. Additionally, I am working on something in the backend called Project Argus - also linked to Discord servers - to enable us to provide you with up-to-date listings through internal data such as how many servers your bot is in, if your avatar changes, if your server invite expires and notifying you as the project owner when this happens."

Q: Is there anything you don't like about Top.gg currently?

"There are a lot of old things, old API endpoints that don't work well, I'd like to see them improved."

Q: Is there an update on Auctions v2? How do you feel about bot ads and the future of bidding?

"Ads v2 is in development, it is tied to the new analytics data pipeline. We are moving away from manual bidding into automated bidding. The rollout of ads depends on underlying platform stability and data quality."

Q: Role Reversal: Veld, do you have questions for us?

"We have a feedback survey, we would appreciate if you could take the time to answer! We are also looking for testers, so if you are a Roblox creator, please reach out, we would love to work with you!"

One Final Question...

Q: Who is Ina and why was she brought onto the team?

Hey reader! That's me! Hello! I am Ina, I joined the Top.gg team in July to support our community work through content and curation across the platform, as well as working behind the scenes on some internal admin. I've spent years working in community-building roles, so a big part of what I do is make sure our community work is thoughtful, organised, and genuinely helpful for creators, developers, and server owners.

Want to collaborate? Get in touch with me on Discord!

As we wrap up this AMA and 2025, one theme has stood out: everything we're building is moving toward a safer, smarter and more connected platform - across Discord, Roblox, and whatever comes next. We're incredibly grateful for everyone who showed up, asked questions, and shared ideas. Your feedback genuinely guides and shapes what we build, and we're excited for what 2026 brings. Until the next AMA!