009. Intergalactic weekend (recap).
Welcome to our first-ever weekly round-up here at @BitsTODAY. Today’s edition was written by @nvo with guest contributions from @hydrocryptic and @gemt. @dripcult ran creative, and @nathanmaton and @asg are solidifying spell-binding partnerships dropping this week 💧💧💧
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Yo,
Wow. What a week on BitClout. From explosive launches (shout out Cryptonauts) to mind boggling innovation from countless committed dev teams, and from allegations of malfeasance to general humor and absurdity, the Clout-iverse has not only expanded since we first started penning our daily drops; it’s actually REVERSING entropy, with the hype and excitement building across the platform rather than dissipating as it grows ⚡⚡
After a day off, @BitsToday is ready to bring that same energy to our first-ever weekly round-up. @ASG is well-rested. @dripcult and @nvo found space to re-fuel their creative juices. And @nathamaton canvassed the galaxy for fun for once, rather than to source the best possible intergalactic partnerships. OK, let’s be real, he was still wheeling and dealing 😉.
Want to take a turn taking a look through our telescope out at the Clout 🌌🌌? Step on up!
Guest cover bit design (intro) by @somdipdey.
https://bitclout.com/u/somdipdey
Diamondhands’ 💎 top 5 weekend 💧s:
#1 BuzzClout
First things first. In partnership with @bitcloutsignal, here’s an exclusive look at the top 5 transactions that went down on Bitclout this week.
Next up, where is this whole “internet” thing headed anyway?
I like where this is going.
We’re not sure who made the original version of this road-map of the web’s trajectory, but we are here for it. We think it provides a cool overview of what people talk about when they talk web3 and how BitClout may fit into the longer-arc’d trajectory of the internet.
The takeaways? With decentralization the name of the game at current, we’re still super super early, whether with respect to web3 in general, BitClout as a platform, or frankly, the internet altogether. It’s like the big bang just boomed like a week ago and we’re still hurtling through space, propelled by explosive energy. Is it bold and brash to even hypothesize BitClout belongs on this chart. Sure. But we’re all for some confidence in this community (LFG). Will we actually look back at BitClout in 5 years as having played a seminal role in web3? Time will tell.
For now, ride the quantum wave, fellow Clouters. 🌊🌊
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops
New projects and innovation have been dropping on the clout daily. Trimming down a list of the most important drops from an entire week? Now that’s a herculean task. Here are a few key ones we want to keep you apprised on, with a focus on some we haven’t covered previously (e.g. if you don’t know about @bitswap yet, we recommend you explore edition 005 😊)
Special thanks to @hydrocrpytic and @gemt who contributed to this section.
Wrapped BitClout:
One project that generated a lot of buzz over the last 24–48 hours is @wBTCLT. Project leader @adrianc officially minted the first Wrapped BitClout token on the ETH Ropsten test network on Friday.
Asking yourself WTF that means? We were too. Rather than embarrass ourselves with the technicals, it suffices to say that Wrapped BitClout will allow you to trade BitClout on the Ethereum blockchain which brings the benefits of Ethereum’s smart contracts to BitClout. E.g. decentralized P2P trading, lending, liquidity mining, all that jazz. This could be a game changer, even @sigil is excited.
@wBTCLT so hot right now.
Plus it looks like @bitswap and @BTCLT may well be partnering soon too 👀
Sooooooon..
One word of caution? As with many projects, the account is controlled by its creator (@adrianc). It sure seems he’s got everyone’s benefit & utility in mind as he builds, but it’s worth noting that this single point of failure is true of lots of projects popping up across the ecosystem.
Huntsauce, we have a problem:
This was less of an UX drop and more of a U… dropped the ball BitClout dev team. Friday night (east coast time), right as the Cryptonauts were counting down to blast off, BitClouters everywhere experienced issues with uploading images.
Not a great day to be a meme account tbh
While the functionality was restored in a matter of hours, it broke again on Saturday and wasn’t live again until 1:45 PM PST or so. Anyone check on @dripcult? He was having some serious meme-drawals.
In all seriousness, now we have to wonder whether this flags a deeper problem. For one, we learned photos were being stored on Imgur and not on a separate content server (initial tip from @williamlaurent). @diamondhands corroborated this in his thread on the issue (here). We understand the tradeoff of not storing images on the blockchain (*sweats profusely under the burden of heavy load*), but we do think it’s a noteworthy example of something centralized breaking on a platform hoping to promote more and more decentralization.
Is this a big crack in the BitClout wall that was covered up by meme posters that suddenly wouldn’t load? Or just a bug at an inopportune time that’s now squashed?
Images went down again Sunday for a good portion of the day, but it looks like we are back in action. @diamondhands posted clarification on the original Saturday image issue here and an updated post on what’s going on this Sunday here. We apologize in advance if your feed is overloaded with memes, I think we’re all working through a backlog.
Protect ya neck-coin:
Finally, in better news, on Saturday Anonymous Avengers ™️ updated platform infrastructure such that all new accounts automatically have a founders fee of 100%. You don’t really need us to summarize why this important, @benzen’s got you covered:
“small change, they puttin’ shame in the game… “
Another reason this is dope? As @charlescoin wrote in our Discord:
“Great change especially since this product change signals that the devs are listening to user feedback and willing to make adjustments to things that they’ve already launched instead of only focusing on new features.”
#3 It’s a clout-troversy
In case you missed it, we had a new account on the Top Weekly Creators list this weekend (though they’ve since fallen off again). This was also notably the first project (i.e. not a celebrity / not a verified clouter) to crack the venerable top 10. They have graced the digital pages of this newsletter before; you know them as @WithdrawBitClout.
At @BitsTODAY, we were optimistic about this project and cheered its arrival. Since then, in our pursuit of balance and objectivity, we’ve heard rumblings and growing controversy surrounding @WithdrawBitClout that we think it’s important to air.
For one, there’s been a wave of bots sending DMs like the below to account soliciting investments in the account.
It’s the “HIT” in all caps for me.
We had a number of @BitsTODAY community members in our Discord report that they received the same spam message from the account shown above.
In the words of the late, great Billy Mays, “But wait! There’s more!”
Instagram? I haven’t heard about that platform in weeks
A BitClout user also received a spam message boasting about @WithdrawBitClout… on their Instagram account. We’re talking multi-platform growth hack campaigns now. (Honestly who goes on IG anymore lol).
Is this just a little grey hat, growth hacking? Perhaps. But it’s not a great look for a project that should be able to stand on its own merits.
Of course, if that were the only yellow flag, we wouldn’t be writing this section.
@WithdrawBitClout has actively made misleading statements, again, many of which were in the service of marketing:
Further still, there have been whispers that the project’s API … well let’s just say it left something to be desired. Here’s @sigil on challenges he sees with @WithdrawBitclout:
“@WithdrawBitClout essentially built the BitSwap beta but with Bitcoin, which has higher transaction fees and less programmability. There was a reason we didn’t ship BitSwap Beta and rebuilt BitSwap entirely from scratch. The BitSwap Beta & @WithdrawBitClout rely on waiting for a seller to directly send BitClout to a buyer and verify it manually by finding the transaction hash in the BitClout block explorer. You can even see this on their website; they have someone manually approving each transaction. This defeats the whole purpose of building an exchange platform — to automate & remove human involvement which is prone to error (plus we need to sleep too).”
Time to find a way to short-sell creator coins? We aren’t taking sides here to that degree just yet, but we do want to take the opportunity to emphasize that any project, no matter how credible the founders and how outstanding the purported value proposition, comes with risk. We’re here to stimulate conversation and healthy debate, for the benefit of the platform as a whole. @WithdrawBitClout, want to clap back in an AMA to air this out? Let us know, we’ll run it.
#4 Stop playin’ this isn’t a game…
Looking for something fun to soothe your Sunday scaries? The absolute menaces @CharlieHilton and @olmstead have you covered. On Saturday, @CharlieHilton announced the imminent launch of the first ever BitClout game, with pre-orders going live soon. The name of the game? @cloutopolygame.
The launch was accompanied by VVS 💎💎 holographic cards that may be part of the game and represent OG BitClout creators.
Mandatory must cop.
All we’re saying is if these end up being available as NFTs, we’ll be heaving up in our MetaMask wallets…
In any case, we’re super eager to play this game.
Charlie take “Global feed” off this. Nobody lands there anyway.
@CharlieHilton shared the above visualization of the board. If @BitsTODAY ever disbands, it will be because @ASG monopolized the @diamondhands real estate and @nvo landed on it one too many times. We know you’ve been there.
#5 Here’s your mandatory reading homework
Social Coins… or Securities: Frequent @BitsTODAY contributor @nigeleccles turned us on to one major frontier of challenges for BitClout, namely how creator coins will be classified. If creator coins and social tokens in general end up following under the SEC’s ‘securities’ classification, things are going to get incredibly complicated. Fast.
Rather than dive too deep on this issue ourselves, we strongly recommend you explore this medium post from Reuben Brahmanathan.
Still Tryna Sell Friends on BitClout?: Daniel Kamen’s got your back. He wrote a succinct, smart piece on how BitClout is here to revolutionize the relationship between fans and creators. You can explore it here.
Here’s Dylan on the inspiration for this piece:
“It became clear to me pretty early on that BitClout was a completely different beast. I wrote the article to try and articulate why that was the case. Why was the community so much more positive, insightful and creative than any other social network? The article really tries to answer that question.”
There you have it. A heavy hitting news weekend here at @BitsToday. We hope this issue will spark some spirited debate around a number of core platform challenges and new projects. We’d love to hear from you, leave a comment on our posts or slide in our DMs with your thoughts and feedback.
Until tomorrow,
@BitsTODAY team over & out