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Hi friends,
Happy gettin’ over the 🐪 day. Things have trended towards the quiet side again over the past few days on BitClout. Of course, as notes @RajLahoti, we usually know what that means:
Before we dive into another edition of @BitsTODAY, let’s show some love for other media mavens, namely the @Krassenstein twins! These lads published their 100th consecutive BitClout recap video today. Their daily consistency and enthusiasm are truly unmatched 💪.
Ready to explore the wide world of the cloutiverse? We sure are. Lez do it 👇
Bits on the menu tonight:
- BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt ⚡️
- Ubiquitous UX drops: Node forecast- Clouty with a chance of nachos
- Roadmap update 🛣️: Sequoia 🌲 talks shop w/ @diamondhands
- Let’s BUIDL 🧱🏗️: devs + investors are cookin’ with gas 🍳️🔥#5
- General absurdity: clouters get charitable 💰❤️
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
Let’s get things started by checkin’ in with @bitcloutsignal on today’s movers and shakers:
Next up? @bithunt’s got the scoop on which community projects were turning heads today 👀:
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: Node forecast- Clouty with a chance of nachos 🧀
Save for some minor UI updates and the recent switch to how 💎s — BitClout’s native tipping / payments feature — get paid (more on that here), things have been quite as far as updates from the core dev team are concerned. Who has been picking up the slack? The community, of course!
In recent days, we’ve seen a whirlwind of new development activity around both existing as well as new nodes via which users can experience BitClout. The latest entrant into the space comes from the team behind @NachoAverage. First, they gave us the world’s longest zoom call (💯 days running). Now? They have their own node for users to taste the BitClout blockchain while enjoying the distinct flavor of @NachoAverage 😋.
The @NachoAverage node also comes complete with delightful easter eggs and design touches. One example? The auto-fill / suggested text in the ‘compose post box:’
Why do nodes matter? As @shubhang reminds us, for BitClout to truly become a decentralized social media force, its userbase should be distributed across a multitude of nodes, or at least different frontends, where each can cater more to its specific frequent users’ interests and activities:
Why are additional nodes so important for decentralization? If all users of the BitClout protocol only engage with it through one ‘gateway’ so-to-speak, then it leaves a lot of decision-making power and control with a small team of ‘super admins’ who control the most popular node. For a deeper dive on it, let’s turn to @sull:
@diamondhands himself corroborated as much in a new piece out today (more on that in section #3), stating:
“The long term vision is that the front end of BitClout, how people access and use it, will be very decentralized. And it’s not only decentralized in the sense of apps, but also geographically decentralized. We will essentially give BitClout.com traffic away to whoever’s doing the best in each vertical, to the point where we don’t need to run a front end anymore. Then my team can focus on what we’re best at, which is the core blockchain.”
As such, we welcome the @NachoAverage node and hope it encourages others to spin up more in pursuit of the optimal BitClout experience 📈.
In parallel, what have other node operators been up to? @Cloutfeed, one of the leading third-party IOS apps for BitClout, runs their own node, giving them purview to do dope stuff like … offer pinned promotional space at the tippy top of the global feed on the @Cloutfeed app!
@Cloutfeed’s NFT auction is just a one-off example of ways that nodes can generate revenue, too 💰. Node operators have the discretion to adjust transaction fees on their nodes, e.g. for things like minting NFTs. So while there’s a big opportunity for new nodes to capitalize on growing their user base, make sure you understand the rules of the road on new nodes you may be using, especially from a security and transaction cost perspective 🙌.
#3 Roadmap update 🛣️: sequoia 🌲 talks shop w/ @diamondhands
Last week, we were treated to one of the more high-profile pieces of press on BitClout in a while. The Business Insider article featured quotes from Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia — one of top VC firms in the world — as well as from @diamondhands himself. Now, in a new article on Medium, @diamondhands and Shaun Maguire of Sequoia published a recent conversation of theirs directly on Medium, sans middleman telling the story 📢📢📢.
Now the core team has shipped a lot of the functionality necessary for BitClout to stand on its own, it seems @diamondhands is hitting the press circuit, promoting BitClout more actively than previously in the process. We reckon this is part and parcel of moving BitClout into marketing mode, or ‘gas on the fire’ mode if you will ⛽️🔥. Sequoia isn’t slacking off in this respect either; today, they trumpeted out the piece to their ~600k Twitter followers:
Pieces like the one that dropped today are critical because it allows folks with a real understanding of BitClout and its potential to slowly take back control of a narrative that keyboard warriors on Twitter, disenfranchised early adopters, and media outlets had coopted (of course, we’ve quietly been trying to help take back control of the narrative in these pages, too 🙂). In fact, this is the tune Shaun Maguire took on Twitter when promoting the piece:
We HIGHLY recommend y’all read this one for yourselves. In the event that you’re in a hurry, we pulled out some of the money quotes from 💎🙌s for u:
“In the same way Ethereum is bringing competition and innovation back to the financial sector by creating an open platform, we hope BitClout will do the same for social media.”
“By building a custom blockchain we can have all the code and all of the data totally open which creates a much more competitive ecosystem for third party apps. So where it all clicked together was realizing if your product is fundamentally money-enabled, like investing in creators, instead of monetizing data you can monetize transactions. The business model is just to maximize the number of transactions flowing through the chain which maximizes the value of the coin.”
“A lot of people don’t know this — we actually weren’t planning to launch until mid 2021. But then the zeitgeist around decentralized social media hit in January, and there was all this news around GameStop that ignited a trend towards investing being a more social thing. So we accelerated everything and launched quietly in March, a lot earlier than expected.”
“When developers ask if they’ll be competing with BitClout’s own apps, I tell them that the way I make money is I own CLOUT, just like everybody else. And I believe the best way to maximize CLOUT is to maximize the number of transactions that are flowing through the BitClout blockchain. It’s the same way that Ethereum actually wants Compound and Uniswap to exist as independent businesses on top of it. Same exact business model, but for the social network.”
#4 Let’s BUIDL 🧱🏗️: devs + investors are cookin’ with gas 🍳️🔥
While @diamondhands and co. pave the path for BitClout in the general public’s imagination, the community, as always, isn’t sitting on their laurels. In addition to developing nodes, one thing we’ve got our eye on is the storm that’s brewing over near the @reade galaxy of the cloutiverse 🪐🌌:
Whether you want to call it build-a-thon, a clout incubator, or something else entirely, this is a space to watch. If you get the likes of @tijn, @mubashariqbal, @JasonDevlin, and others excited about something, you’re cooking with gas. And much in the same way the core team is starting to pour gas on the fire as far as marketing is concerned, if this happens with an uptick in dev activity, it could be a powerful one-two punch 👊🥊.
Attracting developers to new protocols is a critical component of any new successful crypto or blockchain endeavor. The network effects of a strong development presence are exponential: when initial developers build great applications and talent on top of a protocol, it attracts more users. This makes the network more valuable and lucrative, which attracts more developers. From there, pending execution and that incentives remain aligned, more devs attract more users. And more devs attract more users. The cycle repeats, if not iteratively spinning faster with each revolution 🔄♾️.
LFG squad — can’t wait to see what y’all cook up. WATCH THIS SPACE 👀.
#5 General absurdity: clouters get charitable 💰❤️
Just a few editions ago (072, to be precise!) we highlighted a few awesome examples of generosity with creator coins on BitClout. As folks are ever-innovating, this week, a new trend we’ve seen is charitable funds being raised via NFT sales. Two current events, the ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan + a terrible earthquake in Haiti in particular catalyzed action on BitClout ⚡. Here are just a few examples of folks who are rallying behind these causes:
First up was @MELTMedia and a new BitClout artist (welcome!) the agency helped onboard, @HansInglish, with a trading card NFT where proceeds benefitted capacare.org/, an active medical education non-profit in Haiti.
For much deeper dive on how that initiative went down, shout out @STETZINE for the stellar coverage — see here for more!
Elsewhere, BitClout OGs are similarly rallying around aid for Afghan refugees. @Bruhmoments took inspiration from a @JakeUdell musing and executed on an NFT series as well, again with all proceeds benefitting refugees:
All of this ingenuity and generosity gets a certification as #absurdly dope in @BitsTODAY’s book. Plus, it’s the type of stuff that, coupled with @diamondhands PR efforts and a stellar dev community, will take BitClout to the next level and get the general public excited to be here as well 🚀🌙.
Have a beautiful evening or morning or mid-afternoon wherever you are friends! We’ll talk to ya soon ❤
@BitsTODAY
