Interview With Narrative Network
Can you please tell us about the team’s background in blockchain and experience with cryptocurrencies?
The Narrative team has diverse experience with blockchain and cryptocurrency. CEO Ted O’Neill has been heavily involved with researching and investing in crypto for two years and led Narrative’s successful token sale. CTO Brian Lenz first started learning about Bitcoin and blockchain in 2014 and became actively involved in blockchain development in 2017. As a developer for the City of Zion, Brian actively participates in the development of the neo-python project. Bill Cawthra is Narrative’s Director of Systems Engineering who has professional experience designing, deploying, and maintaining private blockchain implementations. Bill has also worked on projects such as automating the deployment of Bitcoin nodes to various cloud providers as well as Kubernetes.
What is the current state of functionality for your project?
Narrative’s Alpha “Chaucer” launched the day after the conclusion of our token sale, enabling participants to suggest and secure niches (content hubs), which will be central to the Narrative platform. To date, more than 300 niches have been secured ranging from cryptocurrency to interior design.
We are in the process of opening up registration to Narrative and have created a digital waiting line that will unlock at key increments as we head towards a beta release later this year. Now anyone can sign up to claim their spot, secure their handle, participate in the niche creation process and earn Referral Rewards for helping grow the community of early adopters.
What difference does blockchain technology make to your operations?
As the first true Content Economy, Narrative disrupts the traditional business model for social media networks. The value of Narrative is represented by the NRVE token, a cryptocurrency that is used to pay for items of value (channels, advertising, etc.) and reward users who positively contribute to the network (content creation, commenting, votes, and more). All revenue for the network is logged and managed using blockchain technology to ensure immutability and transparency.
I find the idea of rewarding content creators, moderators, and everyone who positively influences the quality of content on the network. How did the idea for this spark?
Our first project, back in the mid-90’s was called the UBB, a downloadable message board product that really shaped the way online communities work. And that software made it easy for websites to build communities around their niches. The “niche” model in Narrative was based on that idea of intensive focus on particular subjects and allowing “owners,” moderators, creators, and participants to build amazing community spaces. We took the lessons we learned from years of working with hundreds of thousands of communities and combined that with a network model that uses crypto to serve as the currency for the content ecosystem. Our focus is on creating an economic system that incentives good participants and minimizes the impact of bad actors.
For current social networks, there is no economy; there is only subjugation. The producers and consumers of content on traditional social networks do all of the work and realize none of the income. The economic motive for the corporation running the network is to increase profits through the sale of advertising. Users have no control over whether their personal data is shared with third parties, no input on editorial decisions, and their content can be censored at any time for any reason by a monolithic corporation that calls all of the shots. They have no seat at the table, and in fact their sole role is to keep generating content so the corporation can sell more ads. With Narrative, however, the participants in the network engage symbiotically toward the common goal of creating and maintaining a reputable environment. Narrators are essentially owners in the system, because everyone has an equal chance at prospering, based on the quality of their own actions in the network.
Do you guys have any close competitors? If so, who?
While there are many promising content-centric/social media platforms, Narrative is the first to position the content economy for mass adoption from the outset. From that perspective, we are in competition with all of the “big socials” and also have adjacent competitors in the crypto space and in certain content niche areas. That said, Narrative differentiates on multiple fronts. For example, the platform will have a reputation-based system for surfacing content, you don’t have to be crypto-savvy to participate and redeem rewards, and the community will be self-governing, among other things.
Thinking about the future, do you have a roadmap with relevant upgrades or partnerships?
Our product roadmap continues with beta launch in Q4 2018, and the addition of advertising to the platform in 2019 along with the expansion of the platform to support unique communities for Spanish, French, German, etc.
Is there anything else that you would like the people to know?
To learn more about Narrative, your readers can visit www.narrative.org where they can also claim their spot in the digital waiting line for early access.
Website: https://www.narrative.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/narrative_hq
Telegram: https://t.me/narrativenetwork
