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Hellllo there clouters,
Whew. What a few days it’s been. Since Monday, we’ve seen the price of $clout dip as low as the mid $50s, though it has found support at $69 since 😏. Beyond the price action, there’s been a TON of news to cover. As @artz — the progenitor of this newsletter — said upon his timely return from vacation when asked whether he had plans of abandoning ship:
Just like @artz, we’re not going anywhere 💪. Shall we take a gander around the cloutiverse? It’s as beautiful as ever if you know where to look ✨🌌.
Bits on the menu tonight:
- BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt ⚡️
- Ubiquitous UX drops: BitClout prepares for phase 2 💪
- Moon markets: 🌙 mission delayed, for now … 📉
- Let’s BUIDL 🧱🏗️: the dev community rallies before $clout does
- General absurdity: tootin’ our own horn 🤘 (and others’)
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
Alright, to kick things off, let’s have @bitcloutsignal tell us which creators were the biggest movers and shakers of the day:
Same goes for community projects. @bithunt, what’s the word on the street on projects making gains or taking Ls?
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: BitClout prepares for phase 2 💪
In the background of the price volatility and subsequent hoopla amongst the community, there’s been not one but two big updates on the UX/UI front.
On the front end, the core team tested out a new tutorial on bitclout.com, which all new users will presumably have to go through before they get the keys to the BitClout car 🏎️ (provided they are entering via bitclout.com).
While the tutorial was removed from the sidebar for some time yesterday — presumably for further upgrades and testing — many of us have had a chance to take a crack at it either Monday or today. In six steps, it introduced creators to the concept of their creator coins, buying other creator coins, and even encouraged them to buy their own coin, which seems like a reasonable push from our perspective 👍.
That said, both from a functionality and strategy perspective, the community had considerable feedback, which we’re sure the core team is taking stock of. One concern folks had? The list of creators suggested as ‘good’ buys worth considering when teaching new users to purchase creator coins wasn’t exactly an expansive list:
Luckily, @Maebeam is on it like @HuntSauce is on mai tais in Hawaii rn 🍹.
Another update to the tutorial that would likely help? As noted @ourielohayon, right now, the tutorial doesn’t make clear you’re getting free money to invest in creators and yourself when that part of the tutorial comes up. Which could make people abandon the process entirely:
Viewed in the context of the fact that bitclout.com has also engaged a design agency to redesign bitclout.com and that there’s a referral system coming soon too, the mosaic of updates we’ve seen over the past few weeks point to an impending push to welcome LOTS of new users to BitClout (LFG🚀). The tutorial, while not perfect, will ideally play no small part in making sure they have a good experience. A lot of that of course will be up to us, the community 🤗.
Turning away from the tutorial, on the backend side of things, maeyoncé shipped something we’ve had our eyes on for the better part of a week, namely adding Postgres functionality for BitClout nodes, which will make data on BitClout more searchable and more easily malleable to devs desires:
There’s a whole host of other implications and factors at play here. We could spend time explaining the significance of them to you, but this time around, a cacophony of BitClout devs frankly did it better than we could 😂. First, we can turn to @diamondhands for the technical insight 👨💻:
Next, we can turn our back attention to our fav core dev, @lazynina ❤:
In parting on this section, we can always count on @mubashariqbal for insight into the implications of what’s happening on the development front:
#3 Moon markets: 🌙 mission delayed, for now … 📉
As we began to cover on Monday, even though the real action was percolating as we were finishing up edition 076, the price of $clout has taken a significant hit, falling as much as ~45% from the $100 threshold it was more or less stable at for more than a month. Further, as we explored in our special edition yesterday, the swift downdraft in price was probably occasioned by a decision from the core team to remove price support at the $100 level.
Why did this happen now? For this we turn to @Krassenstein, who had some initial ideas and a helpful roundup:
Fortunately, the core team has also begun to address recent market volatility. First, @diamondhands chimed in to reassure us that plans for the future haven’t changed, and that this rocket ship is just engaging its thrusters 🚀🌙.
As we know and discussed in the above section, September should see a referral program launch, a redesign of bitclout.com, as well as perhaps a Coinbase listing, though this may drift into October. Plus, there’s probably lots more we have no clue about that’s just around the corner 🔜.
Secondly, just in the past few hours, @diamondhands noted that there was no coordinated effort to support the price of $clout at $100. Which is a surprise to us, and we still have no idea how / why $clout was stuck there for so long.
Was Niel Diamond-hands himself buying enough $clout at that price to support the market? We still have a lot of questions here regarding the market mechanics that led $clout to be so stable at $100 until recently and why this changed on Monday. More investigation and discussion required! 🕵️
Even as we get welcome input from the BitClout team, the price decrease has had a material impact on community morale. While there’s lots of good-natured jokes about strapping on our McDonalds visors 🍔, there are plenty of creators trying to supplement their income via BitClout, or who are even full-time, for whom a 30–40% decline in holdings is no small matter. Watching waves of creator coin sales and transfers off the platform hasn’t been easy. There have been some notable exits of folks who were engaging here daily before as well. Know this — we’re all in the same boat 🛥️.
To close on a positive note? While we await a Coinbase listing, which will at least give more users the option to buy $clout, exchanges that already support $clout are making it easier to buy and transfer BitClout’s native currency. Thanks to @brootle for the scoop on this one 🔎!
Finally, daddy Dharmesh Shah never disappoints, either. He’s out there leading the 🐂 who still believe into battle ⚔️, and topped up heavily in $dharmesh coin today. There’s really no words we could use here to fully express our appreciation for what he has done for the community at this point 🙏:
#4 Let’s BUIDL 🧱🏗️: the dev community rallies before $clout does
As the core team continues to ship, the community dev squad isn’t resting on their laurels either. Nor have they ever. Today we saw a whirlwind of activity surrounding fresh proposals and ideas for how to keep the community dev engine humming as BitClout enters phase 2 of its development.
First, @JasonDevlin, one of the big 🧠s behind @CloutCast, outlined the need for a native funding mechanism for teams that are building great tools on and apps for BitClout. At current, it’s hard for all but a few experienced teams or those that secured venture backing in the early days of BitClout to sustain operations; revenue from BitClout operations alone certainly can’t sustain teams with DAUs < 10,000:
@JasonDevlin’s post got a lot of love, and BitClout leaders like @reade are throwing their support behind this vision. There’s a lot more coordination and likely, liaising with the core team, to be done before a $1–3M developer fund gets raised. But we see 0 reason it can’t come to fruition 🌱.
On a more concentrated level, folks like @dharmesh continue to fund key initiatives that would make building on BitClout easier. And he’s got @diamondhands attention and buy-in (which might mean there could be an appetite from the core team for the fund mentioned above as well):
The importance of what @dharmesh is proposing here can’t be understated. Much like integrating postgres was one big step in facilitating development on BitClout, better documentation of how to build will go a long way 🔝.
It’s also great to see how open and intent on community delegation @diamondhands is. BitClout is intended to be a decentralized project in the medium to long-term, after all. To tie this section full circle ⭕, what’s needed is more funding mechanisms to empower people to pour their time and energy into initiatives like the one outlined by @dharmesh, whether their small one-off projects or entire overhauls of existing systems. $dharmesh coin, while powerful, can’t fund development on BitClout forever!
#5 General absurdity: tootin’ our own orn 🤘 (and others’)
To close on another positive note and to toot our own @BitsTODAY horn a lil? Exciting news, the CEO of Medium now follows us… right here on Medium💅🏼. He also seems to be interested in BitClout, which is pretty cool, considering he also co-founded Twitter 🤯.
What are we gonna do about it? For one, we’ll definitely try to connect with Ev to get his perspective on the future of web3 media. And of course, we’ll keep bustin’ our tails, not only to provide BitClout natives with updates on all the goings-on on the platform but to spread the good word to the broader public, too. Seems like they may be taking note of what we’re up to 👀! Ev, one more question… wen claim account?
Bonus content*: Last thing before we go? Unrelated to anything in this edition so far, but we’ll go ahead and toot @danielwilson’s horn, too 🙌. He ran an awesome language / content analysis of the 5,000 posts that received the most diamonds:
Putting his PhD in linguistics to work, @danielwilson’s incredible (and hilarious) article — which you can read on @cloutpub, a BitClout native publishing solution — covers key takeaways for creators looking to optimize their content on BitClout. Accessing the article will cost you a lil’ $clout, but we reckon it’ll pay off in the long-term when your posts start reaping max 💎💎💎s. Ready to hop over from this piece to @danielwilson’s? Click 👉 here.
We keep on rollin’ fam! Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate you. Stay strong , and remember to take care of yourself, not just your creator coin ❤️.️
Our best,
@BitsTODAY
