CULTIVATING OPEN-SOURCE COMMUNITY: AN EXPLORATION INTO POPULA’S DRIP ROYALTIES

Popula is a forward thinking community platform constructed on Near. It presents each community with an autonomous smart contract, ensuring absolute ownership and sovereignty over their data. It further records all member content and interactions on-chain, rewarding them with non-transferable fungible tokens known as Drips. Popula’s design and functionalities are purpose-built to solve prevalent issues impacting existing social and content platforms.

Popula: Platform, Twitter, Medium, Telegram

The Problems Popula Aims to Resolve

Problem 1: The Absence of Control and Ownership

Web2 platforms hold a monopoly over users, their content, data, and social graphs. This means users and communities are devoid of control over their own destinies. Recent developments with platforms like Reddit and Twitter clearly demonstrate this issue.

Solution: Independent Smart Contracts

Each community on Popula is equipped with an independent smart contract on the Near blockchain. These contracts serve as a permanent and transparent record of the community’s activities since inception and guarantee true sovereignty over its content and activities. Communities are built on neutral ground, bolstered by the security and stability of the Near blockchain.

Problem 2: Proving Contributions

Despite users and communities contributing daily to platform growth, they struggle to demonstrate their contributions beyond rudimentary metrics such as user count. Instances of deplatforming or account suspensions can render these metrics meaningless, thereby eroding users’ social capital.

Solution: On-Chain Content Records

Popula offers a perpetual record by logging all member content and interactions on-chain. This enables data-driven community management, ownership and composability, and responsibility and accountability, which we term as Proof of Engagement. The Drip Protocol and Drips are critical to facilitating this.

Problem 3: Dispersed Community Resources

Communities spread their resources across multiple platforms, leading to inefficiencies and decreased productivity. The introduction of Web3 tools has made integrations more complex, with communities forced to mix new tools like Snapshot or Collab.Land with existing Web2 platforms such as Discord.

Solution: An All-Encompassing Platform

Popula aims to offer a complete solution, providing a self-sufficient ecosystem of tools for effective community building and management. Popula incorporates everything from accessibility and group settings to content and user moderation, an NFT toolkit, on-chain governance tools, treasury, and in-community utility (Drips).

Problem 4: Overload of Information and Noise

Traditional platforms are saturated with content and noise, making it difficult to uncover high-quality, meaningful ideas and discussions.

Solution: Dedicated Feeds and Incentives

Popula is designed to be a high-signal/low-noise platform. Each community has a dedicated feed for superior content and conversations. Drips mainly incentivise high-quality contributions and spotlight the most active contributors.

Problem 5: Insufficient Incentives and Collaboration

Despite active participation and co-creation being crucial for sustainable community growth, existing platforms lack efficient reward mechanisms. They fail to incentivise participation, engagement, and positive contributions, and most communities struggle to foster collaboration among members.

Solution: Drips and Drip Royalties

Popula’s Drip Protocol and Drip rewards incentivise positive contributions and engagement. The recent introduction of Drip Royalties enables active, inclusive, and collaborative communities.

A Closer Look at Drip Royalties

Drip Royalties are reputational royalties allowing the original creator of content or NFT to earn Drips each time their content or NFT is shared and engaged with on Popula. Currently, Popula has introduced three types of Drip Royalties:

• Post Drip Royalty: Sharing native-Popula posts within communities.
• Tweet Drip Royalty: Sharing Tweets on Popula.
• NFT Drip Royalty: Sharing NFTs from various Near and Ethereum wallets on Popula.

The Benefits of Drip Royalties

Drip Royalties offer a multitude of benefits to creators, curators, and the broader ecosystem, fostering a healthier and more collaborative environment.

For Creators

• Tangible Rewards: Drip Royalties ensure creators receive direct benefits when their content is shared.
• Attribution and Visibility: Drip Royalties signal project quality, providing a new indicator alongside conventional metrics like trading volume and floor price.

For Curators

• Tangible Support: Curators can tangibly contribute to a creator’s growth by driving Drips their way.
• Quality Signalling: Drip Royalties make it easier for creators to spot which curators have driven more attention to their content.

For the Ecosystem

• Attribution Mark and Supply Chain: Drip Royalties allow for the creation of a creation supply chain, making it easier to trace back to the original and intermediate creators.
• Cross-Community Communication: Drip Royalties encourage content sharing across communities, helping to foster stronger connections and communication and accelerating the growth of the entire Popula ecosystem.

Conclusion

Drip Royalties are transforming the landscape for creators and curators, enabling a truly collaborative environment. They mark another step towards a fairer and more vibrant creative economy. Moving forward, Drip Royalties, as a component of Popula’s strategy, will also align with the direction of BOS, paving the way for true ecosystem interoperability. Together, Popula and NEAR will shape the future of boundless possibilities, where creativity, ownership, and collaboration will propel success and prosperity for users.

Join the Popula testnet to be among the first to experience this groundbreaking revolution!

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