064. Social NFTs launch on BitClout 💥

10 min readJul 29, 2021

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BANG.

Certain days will go down in BitClout history. As will certain editions of @BitsTODAY. There’s edition 001 of course, our first issue ever. In edition 021 we welcomed in the diamonding feature we all now absolutely abuse💎. There’s 045, which commemorated $clout’s listing on Blockchain.com. And then there’s today, 064. What’s so special about today?

Mother. F’ing. NFTs!!! That’s right, folks, NFTs are now live on the BitClout blockchain 🎆🥳💣. Now that they’re finally here, let’s dive in deep and get you caught up not just on all the technical specifics, but… on WTF NFTs are in general, as well as on all the hype and excitement that took over the BitClout platform today surrounding the release. Sound like a fair plan? ⏩

Bits on the menu today:

BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt ⚡️
Ubiquitous UX drops: BitClout’s “Social NFTs.” a whole new category of NFT.
The Cloutifieds: Get it while it’s hot! @BitsTODAY NF50 drops 💦
General absurdity: The mind behind Ethereum name drops BitClout 🤯

Diamondhands’ drops 💎

#1 BuzzClout

Before we dive in, which creators were making the biggest moves on NFT release day? @bitcloutsignal is on it like white on rice 🍚:

In parallel, which community projects were riding the NFT waves today? 🌊🌊 For updates on this one, we turn to @bithunt.

Plus, while we’re hanging with @bithunt, make sure to go check out their new category pages on their website → bithunt.com

kinda salty there isn’t a media category tbh tho…

#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: BitClout’s “Social NFTs.” a whole new category of NFT.

We’ve been building up to it for months. And now it’s finally here. Currently, non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”), which are unique units of data stored on blockchains, are predominantly ‘minted’ (created) on Ethereum, which is the most popular ‘general purpose’ blockchain. Now you can mint NFTs on BitClout too. LFG! 💯💣💥

Why are NFTs on BitClout special? Well, BitClout just became the leading social platform to integrate NFTs. Right now, all NFTs on BitClout are also posts on a feed. Said differently, any post you create on BitClout can be turned into an NFT, which other creators on BitClout can purchase and own. Don’t have a BitClout account yet? Create one here.

So … why would someone buy your NFT on BitClout? This is a great question, and will allow us to dive into a little bit of a primer on what the heck NFTs are to begin with. For one, hopefully your NFT is f*cking sick 🥵🥵🥵. If your post resonates with someone, they might buy the NFT associated with it as a sort of receipt of ownership. E.g., if @bellathorne posts something 🔥 and exclusive on BitClout, and you own the NFT associated with the post, then you have a unique relationship with that post (and @bellathorne). It’s in the word; non-fungible means the token you own can’t be replicated or replaced.

Do you own the content itself from a legal / IP sense? No (cc: @cryptolawyer). NFTs are their own ‘thing’ as it were — you don’t own the post, you own the non-fungible token, the data on the blockchain. Tying back to the receipt analogy, you own the receipt for the item, not really the item itself. But, all that said, having the 🧾 still grants you a special relationship with the creator and with the post that the receipt ties back to.

That’s your 60 second primer on NFTs. Because of the ease with which they can be created and transferred digitally, and because they can be executed with code-back smart contracts on blockchains rather than say, with brokers and lawyers, NFTs have a myriad of other exciting use cases, too 🚀🌌.

Enough about NFTs in general tho. Here’s what the NFT launch on BitClout looked like. Of course, the absolute dev wizard and madman @tijn beat everyone to the punch:

And the bidding on @tijn’s first NFT was equally swift 😤😤😤

as of this writing, the bids on @tijn’s NFT are up to ~$4k 💰💰💰

Besides for an amazingly fast trigger finger, @tijn got his NFT out there before anyone else because he pushed the functionality live on his own node, tijn.club, before it went live on bitclout.com itself.

Just how early was @tijn? So early that @diamondhands and co. were still in the de-bugging stage when @tijn pushed NFTs live on his node 😂:

what better way to do QA than just to do it live, eh?

to be clear, we added this meme. wasn’t @diamondhands 😂

For a minute in the early evening, there was actually concern about whether transactions and NFTs minted on tijn.club would be ‘preserved’ when they launched on bitclout.com. Fortunately they did, in fact, “persist”.

Regardless of bugs and persistence scares, within minutes, users were flooding @tijn’s node (good traffic day, eh @tijn 😉) to mint their own NFTs. NFTs didn’t go live on the primary frontend of BitClout (bitclout.com) until around 8 pm EST:

If you are looking at this post and thinking “yo Diamondhands you should NFT dis.” Then boy do I have news for you.

In terms of the UX, here’s a run-down on the v1 of NFTs on BitClout.

OK (*wipes sweat from brow*). Step one. Here’s what the mint screen looks like, which is where you create a new NFT. To get here, tap the three dots in the right hand corner of any of your past posts:

A quick rundown of the various different features here, sequentially:

Single vs multiple editions determines how many NFTs there will be for your post (ranging from 1/1 to ♾️)
Not all NFTs have to be put on sale right away. i.e. you could mint an NFT without putting it up for auction immediately (perhaps to tease a future sale 💁‍♀️, for instance).
Minimum bids dictate the lowest amount you’d be willing to accept for one of your NFTs.
% Creator Royalty = the % of future re-sales that will continue to accrue to you, the original creator in $clout
% Coin-holder Royalty = the % of the initial NFT sale that will be ‘locked’ in your creator coin (making others’ investments more valuable) 📈

One thing that immediately stands out to us here is that there’s limited optionality around defining auction parameters. What if I wanted to set an auction for 24 hours specifically? Or for 24 minutes? Or if I wanted to set a reserve price where someone can just buy my NFT outright without me having to accept their bid? We imagine these will be on the roadmap.

On the homepage sidebar, we also now have new tabs for ‘My NFT Bids’ and ‘My NFT Gallery’. Both of these re-direct to the ‘NFT’ tab on user profiles. There are now three toggles within this tab: “For Sale”, “Gallery” and “My Bids”. “My Bids” aggregates all the bids you’ve made on other creators’ NFTs. “Gallery” showcases NFTs you’ve purchased, and “For Sale” shows all posts that you yourself have turned into NFTs and where the auctions are still live.

Here’s what the “My Bids” page, for instance, looks like once you’ve started bidding on creators’ NFTs:

I knead a bread NFT. BreadFT if you will.

Meanwhile, if you’ve minted an NFT and you’re ready to accept a bid (ca-ching! 💸), here’s what the page (under the new “My Auctions” tab on the post) looks like:

@nvo taking these NFT proceeds straight back to @sourdough’s bakery 🍞

The “My Auctions” tab is effectively where you manage bids for a given NFT or decide to end an auction that’s presently live. What are the other tabs on a given NFT? “All bids” directs to the full list of bids on a specific NFT. “Owners” will showcase who the owners of certain NFTs are (e.g. once creators have elected winning bids) without needing to root through blockchain data, too.

Last but not least, what’s up with that shiny new tab option on our feeds titled “NFT Showcase?” Looks like it’s not quite ready for our eyes yet… though that promotion strategy has us raising our eyebrows 🤨. Looks like the core team is welcoming some hype on competitor social media platforms 👀👀👀. You can always count on Neil @diamondhands and gang to pull some sweet marketing hacks.

damn, haven’t had a countdown since deflation bomb days ⌛

Alriiiight. That’s enough on the functionality side. Turning to the beautiful BitClout community … what say you about NFTs? There was certainly no shortage of excitement & hype. Here’s a sampling of the general absurdity 🤪:

Honestly, if you read nothing else in this issue, @flickapp summed it up well:

We were also pleased to see OGs like mama mae gettin’ in on the minting action 🤗:

Further, the core dev we have the biggest crush on rn, @lazynina, also tee’d up an NFT … with one of the all-time 🔝 posts in terms of engagement:

we will str8 up fight y’all bidding for this one 🥊

As far as creative uses of NFTs are concerned, @ClayPerryMusic is out there settin’ a SUPER high bar with his all-inclusive first NFT, which comes with some top notch VIP benefits for life for the NFT’s owner. Have a look at this 👀

some of us are mintin’ memes while @ClayPerryMusic been str8 SCHEMING

Of course, this is just a small sampling of all the NFT action on BitClout in the first ~12 hours since the functionality has gone live. We’re stoked to see all the creative use cases that creators drum up in the coming days and weeks. The first NFT marketplaces with sleek UX/UI are also gonna be 🥵🥵🥵. @minted, when can we expect y’all to have somethin’ for us on that front 😏?

In closing, HUGE shoutout to @diamondhands and all the devs who have indubitably been working non-stop to bring this functionality to BitClout, as well as to take considerable community feedback into account pre-launch. Block by block, we see y’all building the future of social media out here 💪.

Want to support your local dev? Well … even @diamondhands has his first NFT live:

@lazynina, u & us, dinner, say Nobu Friday @ 7pm? drinks on us

P.S., shoutout to all the degens bidding up these NFTs 🤑. You make this market work 📈. We see you @CreatorFund, @Krassenstein, @100, @bruhmoments, @JasonKhoury, et. all

#3 The Cloutifieds: Get it while it’s hot! @BitsTODAY NF50 drops 💦

📢 HOT OFF THE PRESSES 📢. OF COURSE we had drop some NFT goodies on ya’ll. Not only do we have a batch of NF50s for purchase on Bitclout, but we went ahead and officially shipped a fresh batch of NF50s on the Ethereum blockchain. You can check them out and buy here!

As a reminder (and you can explore much more in our whitepaper on this NFT release), we’re releasing 25 static NFTs on BitClout and 25 on Ethereum. Then there’ll also be a super special 1/1 dynamic release on BitClout. Below you can see the static version of the NFT:

So … what are you waiting for? Go grab a piece of history while you can!

#4 General absurdity: The mind behind ETH name drops BitClout 🤯

As if NFTs launching on BitClout wasn’t enough for one day, we’ve just now realized that absolute crypto legend, Vitalik Buterin, the brain behind Ethereum, name-dropped BitClout in a presentation at last week’s Ethereum conference in Paris. Whoops, that one slipped our radar somehow! 🚨 Luckily, it didn’t slip @JakeUdell’s 👇

If you’re interested in listening to the part of the convo where BitClout comes up, you can skip right to 20:00 in this video. Below are some of the money quotes. The full conversation is also well worth listening, especially the section starting around minute 15:30 on crypto x social media in general.

Examples of crypto social media that are not Ethereum and that are not ghost towns exist. I don’t fully approve of the economics of everything on here… but BitClout … not a ghost town… There is evidence of existing demand for some kind of decentralized social media.

While it’s pretty cool that Vitalik gave BitClout a look, we should also be real and not treat this purely as hype. There’s little doubt that there’ll be an Ethereum-blockchain based competitor to BitClout soon. While there’s room for lots of social media platforms, it’s altogether possible someone will build a solution on Ethereum to challenge the clout. TBD if things like NFTs and a first-mover advantage are enough to build a moat 🏰.

Whew. That was a doozy. Someone go buy @nvo’s NFTs for the work he put in on this one. Jk, we appreciate you just for tuning in 😊.

The @BitsTODAY boyz