Social Tokens are not just a fad, but an era ｜Meta Network × OG Labs Interview

The day before yesterday, Meta Network and OG Labs got together for an online seminar to discuss what a social token is, what the value of a social token is based on, and the advantages of Meta compared with other projects.

Moderator: BlockPunk , the principal and co-founder of OG Labs . Hereinafter referred to as [Punk].

Guest: Minako Kojima, founder of Meta Network . Hereinafter referred to as [Kojima].

Punk: Can you introduce Meta Network to us? Including what problems you want to solve, what the difference is between Meta and “Shun Matataki “.

Kojima: Actually, there is no difference. This change is the same as when Maskbook was renamed Mask Network, just re-branding. However, the specific structure is slightly different. When we made Matataki, we hoped that cross-connectivity would be relatively high, that is, modules would be combined to work; but now we hope to abstract each module so they can also work independently.

Our most important module is the one based on our token, which includes the module for issuing transactions. We extracted this layer and called it “ Meta Network “. In this case, our original business ( Soon Matataki ) is equivalent to the application layer on top of the protocol layer. We wanted to do a redesign. The problem we want to solve is to provide a token economy used to empower creators.

When we refer to “creator” it is in the broader sense. Not only creators of articles or the author of an open source library, but also including the author of short videos such as the host of up on station b, or the author of an open source piece of software, or even an independent game developer.

We hope that the token economy can strengthen the connection between fans and creators. We did an offline event in Shanghai last week, for independent game producers. There were a lot of independent game producers there. They showed off their projects, some of which were very, very high quality. But these independent game developers have no money, no team, and no time to turn these great ideas into great products. I think this is a pity. I also have been at this stage, because I can be regarded as a creator in a broad sense, often digging holes and not filling them. I hoped that there could be a tool to help me turn these ideas into reality. That tool happened to be in crypto. We found our opportunity, and started designing our product in 2018.

Now because of mainstream attention to NFTs, more and more people are beginning to understand. Some people call it social tokens, others call it community tokens, and some call it DAO, with many names. But I think they all refer to the same thing. Including the recent mirror.xyz , their popular “crowdfunding creation mechanism”, we tried it a long time ago. We now hope to complete a finished product, and then deliver it to our creators, so that they can fully experience how to use blockchain to solve their problems.

https://blockchain.capital/consumer-meets-crypto/

Punk: Actually, the concept of social tokens is not very new, because when Ethereum first came out, there was a slogan saying “ Tokenize Everything “. So social relations and social capital will obviously be tokenized. But why has this matter only become so important today? Why have so many projects for social tokens suddenly emerged, and even those in the top 30 , such as CHZ? What new things can they bring to creators?

Kojima: (shared his screen) Can everyone see my screen? This article was written by an author in the previous three months. He mainly discussed NFTs, but I think you should put his writing in the context of community tokens to thoroughly understand it.

Let me give you a simple example. For example, some time ago, Shenyu reposted some videos he made for Fei Protocol on Weibo and WeChat, explaining in detail how he went to work and how to participate. What was the result, within just a few minutes of coming out, it was hijacked. One of our community partners previously posted an introduction to an online VR space on Weibo, called CryptoVoices, which is an online interactive VR community. His article was deleted from Weibo shortly after it was posted.

There is now a popular movement overseas called “platform-less media”, “de-platformed media.” Which is where the content of the creator does not have to rely on a content community. We think this movement is very important. Let me give you a simple example, using the medium of podcasting. Now there are some general-purpose podcasting clients. They are the earliest form of platform-less media. We believe that more “de-platformed mediums” will appear and become popular.

But how do creators in this type of media keep in touch with their readers? That is where NFTs and social tokens play a very key. This article illustrates this trend.

Let me cite another example. At the meeting we attended last Tuesday, I met an independent game producer there. This is a Chinese style action game he made (showing the actual demo video on bilibili ). We were very excited after watching this video, but we found that he was already running out of funds, and there was no team and no investment. This is such a pity, right, he could have become a carrier of culture, if there was a better way for delivery.

Let’s imagine, If we tokenized this, in its very early days, if you thought was good, you could participate and get token rewards, then eventually inevitably it would become an investable asset. In this way, he has the opportunity to continue to deliver things that he could not deliver. In fact, Bitcoin was the first to do something like this.

In 2015, there was a very famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Naval Ravikant, you may have read some of his articles. In 2015, he wrote an article called The Bitcoin Model for Crowdfunding.

The main idea is that when we understand Bitcoin, we cannot simply understand it as a currency. You have to regard it as a process. For example, open source software (after the concept of a token) can be published in this way. This article has given me a lot of inspiration. He said that this is a “model of creation”. We feel that after the popularization of Ethereum ERC-20, now there are so many DeFi protocols, it will be easier to do this. So we have been looking for products like this.

At the moment, there are two that best fit the form we have in mind. The first is Gitcoin, which has just completed a new round of financing. But this platform is still relatively Web2.0. It does not have many components of the token economy. It is more like a traditional outsourcing and bounty website. Although I made a lot of money in this website by participating in hackathons and bounty, it is not what we imagined.

Another of my favorite sites is itch.io. It is an independent game producer platform that has been operated and maintained by individual developers for several years. The difference between it and Steam is that it is more of a community of independent game developers. There are many semi-finished products on it, that is, the semi-finished products you can’t see on Steam. Only some modules, or some materials and production tools can be distributed on this website.

This platform will not charge you any commission, but you can adjust it yourself. For example, I think your website is good, and I am willing to donate part of my income to you. There is also a very cool Game Jams calendar on it, where you can see which games are being released every moment.

A big package was sold on BIM, containing lots of games from black producers, collected together, for only $5. I remember that the bag was sold for several million dollars in the end, a very amazing result. This incident alone made this website known to a lot of people at once. I think it would be very suitable to combine this with the token economy. For example, in the early stage of a game, we buy some original tokens of the game, and you can participate in the creation of the game through your original stock (token). During the production process, this was a very attractive thing for me. Such a method can also help us to take part in more innovative, more imaginative projects that could not be a part of under the existing game industry. I think this is very meaningful.

Punk: Actually, we have seen a lot of social token platforms. Some of them were funded during the last bull market. Many, like CHZ, should be familiar to everyone. Some people have already made money through CHZ; including Rally. The Coinlist list; includes projects like Tryroll. Compared with these platforms, what are the characteristics and advantages of Meta?

Kojima: I think that compared with them, one of the biggest advantages is that we are more open and modular, we can be more closely integrated with other DeFi protocols. The platforms you mentioned above are not open-source, but each of our Meta modules was open-source a long time ago . You can see what we are doing every day and what we are doing on Meta ’s Github.

One advantage of this is that you can take out any of the modules to run separately, such as the editor module, content expansion module, and third-party account system. For example, Tryroll ‘s airdrop module is embedded in the website right?, but we actually have two airdrop (module) programs, neither of which is strictly tied to the Matataki website. For example, Airdrop that Dapp, I now give you a demo at:

For example, you can see many applications in our DApp store. The most popular in our community before was the Airdrop application, and there is also an application called Quest. Both of these can be used as Airdrop tools. Your needs determine which one to use. The logic of Airdrop is relatively simple, just like WeChat red envelopes, you can choose to payout randomly or by average. You can also see the history of red envelopes in your account.

Quest is more complicated. You can post directly or customize some tasks, such as follow and retweet. There are modules for custom tasks in it, and you can design it yourself. This combination line is very powerful, but it requires users to use their imagination.

So compared with Rally and Tryroll, we think the biggest difference between Meta is that we leave more room for customization for creators. Because the social token event is considered very early overseas, we think we should leave the imagination space to the creators themselves. We do not restrict them to death and say how many tokens a creator must send. For example, Tryroll stipulates that the total amount to be sent by creators is 10 million, and it will take three or four years to unlock, every month you get sent a lump sum, and the platform also takes 15% commission. Meta does not have such a design. And any ERC20 can be imported to the Matataki platform. We also welcome you to export the tokens generated in Matataki to other ecosystems. We will not go back and restrict you to only use your token in Meta .

For example, our “Folding Door” system now not only supports you to import and export tokens using chains such as Binance Smart Chain, or Matic, but will also support NEAR and Polkadot in the future. No matter what ecosystem you are in, we will support and enable your interaction. And, if your token grows to a certain scale, you can export it into a “mainnet”, and then you can leave our wallet.

Meta’s philosophy is to not control the user’s content or assets. This is another difference between us and other platforms. Our product is made based on understanding the principles of Web3 and DeFi. I think our team understands DeFi better than other teams in similar projects, because we have done several DeFi projects.

To give another example, such as Bitclout, which has been very popular recently, they were the team behind Basis, and they raised 200 million yuan, in the end the project ended and the tokens were refunded; however, a different team carried on, taking over Basis Cash, which continued the original concept. They were able to raise so much money that year, indicating that the financing ability is still relatively strong.

But I think at least two points need to be questioned. The first point is that there are many tokens on Bitclout. Without the consent of many of the big KOLs , they were simply “forced on”. I personally think that this approach does not respect creators, even if the creator eventually acknowledges the asset, these coin holders may not be the core users of the creators products, they may just be speculators. But on Meta, the people who issue tokens here decide to issue and manage their own communities. Creators can allocate precious initial tokens to their core community.

The second problem is that I think its design architecture is a bit old. For example, as a fan, I want to buy the creator’s token, I must first buy Bitclout, and I must send money to a Bitcoin address. Everyone knows that there are no smart contracts on Bitcoin, so there is no verification procedure, the logic of this process is very confusing. Is risk of losing your assets? Obviously there is, just like Tryroll. There are already articles attacking the security risks of Bitclout, you can search for it yourself. What I want to express is that they actually made such a strange design based on Bitcoin in 2021. That gives me the feeling they have not paid attention to the development of DeFi at all in the past two years, so they made such a strange design. Outdated design, this is my opinion of Bitclout. But Bitclout still has its merits, that is, it can help some creators who are not originally familiar with crypto native ecosystems to understand our industry and understand how it can help them.

We have also been doing similar things recently, we are making a module called “independent sub-site”. This module can help creators generate repo for each article on github. You can choose whether your article is stored in IPFS Up or repo. Then some open source tools can be used to help you generate your own independent blog. Although independent blogs have been very insignificant in recent years, many independent bloggers have stopped writing and have started WeChat official accounts, but I think that with the rekindling of the Web3 trend of thought, there will be more and more creators moving the content back to his own independent blog. We are doing that right now.

What are the benefits of this? It can greatly reduce the threshold for creators to build independent blogs. In the past, independent bloggers were basically engineers, it’s not too difficult for an engineer to start a blog; but for ordinary creators, such as novelists, they may not use Github at all, nor will he know how to use common tools to build blogs. With Meta, you can generate your own station with one click. A second advantage is that we don’t have to host the content.

I wrote an article called “People Die, but Long Live GitHub”, which discussed Github’s storage time and it’s life may be longer than you think, or even longer than IPFS. Github did something very interesting, it packed a lot of code into a lot of hard disks to be permanently stored in the North Pole. The network effect of Github is so strong that even without it’s permanent storage, you can trust it. You can throw your content on it, so that it becomes “platform-less media “, which I mentioned before. The third advantage is that you can experience our products without feeling. Now you come to our network to post articles, you will find that there are many users from crypto circles, but for example, if you are a science fiction writer, and you don’t like to associate with these users, after you have an independent sub-site, you will have an experience like a substack, lots of creation already have their own substack accounts. Once you have used it, you will find it has many benefits, for example, it does not interfere with users and the interface is very refreshing.