Deep Dive: Taki
A deep dive into the web3 social platform that rewards its creators and users for meaningful contributions.
In October 2003, four Harvard sophomores built and released a platform named Facemash that allowed for their Harvard classmates and colleagues to connect with each other. It gained a lot of traction within the campus with thousands thronging the website to get on it. The popularity of the platform they had created did not go unnoticed by the sophomores. They renamed it to Facebook, expanded it to other universities in the Boston region, the Ivy Leagues and gradually across all institutions across the country. Soon enough in 2006, anyone with a valid email address could create an account for free on the platform and connect with anyone across the world.
Since then, a lot of social media platforms have popped up, like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, to name a few. They’ve helped people connect with others, and have also provided millions of content creators with a way to make their content their livelihood. Despite this, these centralized web2 platforms are notoriously famous for taking a huge chunk of the earnings that the content that the users create generate on the platform, whilst having the power to censor the content as they wish. This is exactly what Web3 social media platforms like Taki aim to solve.
Web3 Social Media Platforms
Content creators, fans and casual users are the backbone of any social media platform. Web3 Social Media platforms generally are better than their web2 counterparts at catering to them and also in the following aspects:
- Decentralized: The fundamental building block of web3 applications is decentralization, with no single entity boasting a monopoly over how the app works or operates. Web3 platforms also take decentralization in principle and implement it for the betterment of its users and the community. This prevents a single institution from having the power to censor and take down any content on the platform, and that power rests solely with its creator. This is not the case with Web2, where for example, we see multiple cases of videos being taken down by YouTube for “violating community guidelines’’, with its creators rendered helpless. Though there are instances where this does prove to be beneficial for the community by keeping hate and inappropriate content away, it is still a tough call to make to trust a centralized platform to keep up with their guidelines, which can change any time. In Web3, you don’t have to trust anyone else to keep your content on the platform, as you are the sole owner. Hence, such platforms are also said to be trustless.
- Ownership: As mentioned in the previous point, the content creator is the sole owner for the content they publish. They get to decide on what happens with their content and what it’s used for on the platform. All earnings that their content generates on the platform goes to the content creator, with no middlemen in between.
- Governance: Since there is no single entity policing and taking decisions on the future of their platform, this is done by a group of people who vote on proposals. Governance on such Web3 platforms is done by people who own a certain amount of the platform’s token, with the number of tokens they hold indicating the voting power they hold. This institutional structure is called a Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) and they generally act as a backbone for a majority of the Web3 applications.
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Taki App
Taki is a Web3 social network that ticks all the points we had a look at in the previous section. Taki users can earn by participating and contributing to the community. Taki aims to create an Engage to Earn model where users can earn crypto by just showing up and consuming content, interacting with friends, and making new friends. This benefits not just the content creators and their fans, but also casual users on the platform.
Taki is built on the Solana network, and is currently in beta having onboarded over 125k users. They launched their alpha in early 2022, and have always been an invite only platform. Users interested to join the platform also have an option of joining their waitlist, which is at 665k at the time of writing! They had their token’s, TAKI, Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) on OKX and Gate.io and their Initial DEX Offering (IDO) on Orca.so. They are partnered by SuperLayer and RLY Network Association, and are funded by investment giants like Coinbase Ventures, CoinDCX, and Solana Ventures.
How Taki works is really interesting. They have their own token named TAKI, which users can use to engage with content and also earn by publishing content, by writing a post or even by commenting on one.
Coins on Taki
There are two types of coins on the Taki App: the TAKI token, which is on chain on the Solana network, and user coins, which are coins unique to each user that is currently not on chain.
When someone creates their profile using their email address and verifies the same with their phone number, a Taki Wallet is created which can be used to view one’s Taki and user coins. Users can also withdraw Taki to their own Solana wallets.
User coins represent the influence that a user has on other users and the contribution that they make to the platform. User coins can be bought with TAKI tokens in the Taki App only, as they are not on chain. The value of user coins rises as more of them are purchased and are in circulation, and drops when sold.
A user can reward other users for the content that they publish, be it posts or comments, by giving them Gold TAKIs, which are similar to likes on other platforms. Each Gold TAKI costs 2 TAKI tokens to the user who wishes to give it. Those TAKI tokens are then split amongst the content creator and those users who hold the content creator’s user coins. To be specific, 50% of the Gold TAKI goes to the content creator, while the rest go to the creator’s user coin holders, proportional to how many user coins each user holds.
Apart from buying TAKI from a decentralized exchange like OKX, users can earn TAKI tokens in the following ways:
- Verifying their wallet gives 3 TAKI tokens
- Inviting a friend using your referral code and getting them to verify their profiles gives a TAKI token per person (upto 3 people)
- Being rewarded with Gold TAKI for your posts/comments by other users.
- Completing simple daily tasks which involve buying user coins, giving Gold TAKIs, and commenting on posts.
Taki’s shortcomings
Taki definitely is a game changer in the social media space, providing more power to its users. However, there are certain areas where they fall behind when compared to other social media platforms, both in web2 and web3.
The first shortcoming is definitely the platform being invite only. This prevents many people who are interested in exploring web3 applications and projects from venturing towards Taki. The humongous waitlist of over 665k people doesn’t make it any better.
The other shortcoming I personally ran into while using the application was in trying to withdraw my TAKI tokens to my personal Phantom wallet. The Taki Documentation does mention that users can withdraw their TAKI tokens to their personal Solana wallets. However, in the Taki Wallet page, even though there was an option to Buy and Deposit TAKI through my Phantom wallet, there was no option to withdraw the TAKI tokens in my Taki Wallet.
Conclusion
Taki is a young platform and is in its nascent stages. It has a lot of potential to be one of the very best social media platforms out there and what the Taki team holds for its users in the future should be really exciting to wait for. Having been on the platform for just over a couple of days and looking at how user centric the whole system is designed, I have no doubts that they’ll reach greater heights if they continue in the same path by delivering to the users what was promised in their roadmap. Here’s to wishing them all the very best in taking the platform to the next level!
References
Taki Website — taki.app/
Taki Documentation (Wiki) — wiki.taki.app/
Taki Statistics — taki.app/statistics/
Taki’s Medium Page — takiapp.medium.com
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