I’m DN, the founder of DEGEN NEWS. This will be the first of our weekly articles.
For as long as I can remember, I have compulsively consumed news whenever I could. It’s not that I make myself read or watch it, it’s just that I’m addicted to knowing more about the world and how it works.
Understanding that the excessive consumption of one news source would severely limit my worldview, I have always had multiple news apps installed on my phone from organizations with different sources of funding, ideological inclinations, and types of journalism. I also often rely on news aggregators such as Google News in my pursuit of understanding the world through the lens of different people.
One night, as I was browsing the news on my phone and scrolling through NFT Twitter on my laptop, an idea spontaneously popped up — what if I reported on the happenings of the NFT space in the same manner one would a serious newsworthy event?
It was a joke, at first — I purposely delivered the reports to shock and intrigue whoever read them. But things changed: as DEGEN NEWS’ reach increased, so did our readers’ expectations.
What started off as a simple process of finding Tweets and reporting on them with a twist, became one where I depend on a Standards and Guidelines document (created by myself) to preserve the integrity of the information, ensure the safety of readers and reported individuals, mitigate Twitter suspension risk, and more. But without losing the DEGEN NEWS flair…
A key development over time has been readers’ increasing demand that the information source be primary, not secondary. Although DEGEN NEWS has taken several steps to meet that market need, these have proven to be insufficient.
After weeks of brainstorming with Ryuk, our VP at DEGEN NEWS, we created an architecture that addresses this problem — DEGEN HQ. Our Report2Earn DAPP (DEGEN HQ), to be finalized by April 2023, will be crucial for us to keep up with our readers’ preferences — regardless of their blockchain. The launch of our DEGEN NEWS NFT collection is the start of this process: https://magiceden.io/marketplace/degen_news?activeTab=items.
As this is a new concept, it will naturally evolve as we work on it. Nevertheless, its end goal will be to source and report on information in a decentralized fashion.
Our DEGEN HQ stakeholders will be:
- Reporters: Provide info to the council.
- Compensated based on the accuracy and pertinence of the info provided. - The Council: Approves/rejects info and its publishing.
- Compensated based on what is published. - Readers: Consume the info.
- Compensated with information-based utility.
This mechanism will be the first of its kind to be fully automated — allowing us to outsource reporters efficiently and maximize the number of primary sources.
It will also enable a 24/7 dedicated team to provide coverage for:
- Wider audience (standard).
- Specific DAOs — via partnerships (openly disclosed).
Despite our DEGEN HQ DAPP, DEGEN NEWS still needs to hire in-house reporters to make sure that our coverage on Twitter is 24/7 during these next few months. Although we cannot hire as many as we would like to because of our limited funding, we are still capable of hiring two reporters. Whoever is interested may apply here: https://forms.gle/9HPfh9ioUF1JmNof7
What about revenue streams? We can leave that for next week’s article.
Have a happy Sunday.
DN
