Introducing Crypto DM — Paid Direct Messages From Supporters
It’s a launch day for the SENSE team as today marks the launch of Crypto DM, a prototype we’ve been working on to productize our latest smart contract.
The first quarter of the year earmarked important progress for the SENSE project. We launched a thought paper introducing ideas for the SENSE Core Platform as well as an intended roadmap, and described important relationships we built with new partners around our knowledge attribution work.
Strategic Overview since Q1
The roadmap created at the beginning of the year took into account important assumptions about the project; mainly that the end-game depends on attributed knowledge of humans across the Web and applications they use everyday, so that a network of human information might be available for purchase and access on a decentralized basis.
Our partnerships team found evidence in Q1 that knowledge attribution is indeed a means for enabling people to earn without having to trade their time for money, but that the demand for data living on the blockchain does not yet exist to create meaningful impact for those whose data would be accessed.
More importantly, the consumer feedback we received across the many events our team attended pointed to far more excitement based on the ability to contact people on a decentralized basis, moreso than the value proposition of attributed and monetized human knowledge. The consumer taught us that indexing and finding people is not as exciting as being able contact them without any intermediary.
The consumer taught us that indexing and finding people is not as exciting as being able contact them without any intermediary.
This represented a multi-year effort with growing risk — and it became important to continue building value while we de-risked those assumptions.
Decentralized Messaging Technology
Meanwhile, in the same quarter our team completed the invention of the Contact core technology — which would be required in all cases — which acts as the basis of decentralized messaging powering the connections made between humans and those seeking their data.
Emboldened by this new technology, we asked ourselves how we might empower people to message each other on a decentralized basis and earn right away, by digging deeper into one of the most fundamental elements of our culture, skill and experience set as a team — our messaging DNA— and to continue moving towards the same future we’ve described in the past:
Decentralized messaging will power the future of work, and we have a moral imperative to continue trail blazing that path.
This leads us to the start of Q2, in which we identified important future issues related to the Contact Core due to the way the Ethereum blockchain works.
While we will be releasing a detailed review of our learnings relative to the project and where ETH falls short, the result of this reality left us with the task of identifying a blockchain partner where speed, scalability, storage and cost would not be impediments.
In identifying a winning candidate, the technical limitations surrounding our messaging technology began to theoretically disappear, and an opportunity to focus on decentralized messaging itself opened for SENSE.
While it is clear that SENSE as an ERC-20 token must evolve for it to possibly power decentralized messaging (due to the way ETH works), additional questions were created about what decentralized messaging actually means, what it looks and feels like, and most importantly for whom does it create value?
This leads us to the first exercise in productizing a smart contract we have created and creating a decentralized messaging prototype for a defined audience we’ve identified as most likely to be early adopters: anyone whose business relies on monetizing supporters all across the Web.
Earn ETH with Crypto DM by signing up at https://ether.dm
What is Crypto DM and why did we built it?
We believe the future of messaging is decentralized — content creators build entire businesses around the audiences they engage with across networks like Twitch, YouTube, Reddit and so many more, but there’s growing fears surrounding data, demonetization, censorship and discovery.
Our mission is to release the first truly decentralized messenger, and Crypto DM is a prototype in motion of the technology that will power it.
Our goal is to democratize the first decentralized messaging layer as a foundation for the release of the messenger itself. It’s the perfect learning opportunity for us, while contributing a zero-fee messaging tool to the ecosystem and making it dead easy to earn Ether from supporters willing to pay for your attention.
The only way to grow adoption is by removing barriers to entry and friction along the way. Today, Crypto DM launches on the Ethereum network while we prepare the evolution of the SENSE ERC-20 token. It is expected that Crypto DM will support all of ETH, SENSE and EOS currencies for usage in the near future.
What does Crypto DM do?
- It makes it dead easy for anyone to earn Ether for receiving paid direct messages from their supporters on any platform
- Makes it easy for supporters to message their favorite content creators with an ETH tip in as little as 3 clicks
- Messages sent are delivered by the Crypto DM Bot on a messenger of your choice, keeping your contact information totally private and secure.
You can start earning Ether quickly and securely in three simple steps:
- Pair an Ethereum wallet address to a messenger like Telegram
- Sign & verify your wallet address using MetaMask
- Once you’re signed up, you’ll get a custom address link you can paste anywhere on the web, enabling anyone with an Ether wallet and MetaMask to send you ETH and a short note in just three clicks.
It’s that easy.
What’s the catch?
None. No hidden fees, no middleman, no time wasted. Supporters determine the amount a creator gets paid, and the creator keeps 100%, every single time.
Who is it for?
Makers, content creators, and streamers fed up by big companies taking a cut of their earnings. Demonetized artists who want to take back control of their careers. Anyone and everyone who wants to monetize their social profiles and better connect with their tribe.
If you have something to share and an audience that cares, Crypto DM is for you!
Getting Started with Crypto DM
Signing up to Crypto DM will pair your Ethereum address to a messenger where your messages will be delivered. After signing up, anyone will be able to send you a message and a tip by visiting ether.dm/your-address-here.
Here’s how:
- Visit https://ether.dm and click “Start Earning”
- On the first address verification step, click on “Sign Message.” You’ll need the MetaMask Chrome Extension to sign with your address.
- On the second address verification step, a two-factor authentication code will be displayed. After clicking “Copy Code,” you’ll be able to open Telegram right from the page.
- Doing this will open Telegram for you. You may need to use the /start command, at which point a message will ask you to 🙋 Please enter your six-digit code which you copied in the previous step.
- Simply paste the code you’ve copied and send the message. That’s it! Your wallet will be paired from there on out.
- If you return to the page, you’ll notice the last step confirms you’ve successfully signed up, and enables you to copy your personal address URL to paste into social media bios, signatures, or anywhere you wish to allow someone to pay for your attention.
To give content creators an enabling tool for their audience, we’ve also released a Chrome Extension which makes it easy to identify addresses accepting messages for ETH.
What’s coming next?
We’re preparing a few more iterations of Crypto DM by adding a few improvements, so as to make it feature complete enough to answer our market and product hypotheses accurately.
That includes support to connect with additional messengers such as Discord, additional currency support such as SENSE and EOS, as well as finalizing the feature needed to allow message senders to choose the amount of ETH they send (currently locked at 0.01 ETH).
Stick around the SENSE Telegram channel to participate, share your feedback and learn more about new features as we prepare to launch them. Our goal is to touch 50,000 users by the time the SENSE ERC-20 token has to evolve, and we’re counting on you to help us reach that number!
