064. Social NFTs launch on BitClout 💥
BANG.
Certain days will go down in BitClout history. As will certain editions of @BitsTODAY. There’s edition 001 of course, our first issue ever. In edition 021 we welcomed in the diamonding feature we all now absolutely abuse💎. There’s 045, which commemorated $clout’s listing on Blockchain.com. And then there’s today, 064. What’s so special about today?
Mother. F’ing. NFTs!!! That’s right, folks, NFTs are now live on the BitClout blockchain 🎆🥳💣. Now that they’re finally here, let’s dive in deep and get you caught up not just on all the technical specifics, but… on WTF NFTs are in general, as well as on all the hype and excitement that took over the BitClout platform today surrounding the release. Sound like a fair plan? ⏩
Bits on the menu today:
BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt ⚡️
Ubiquitous UX drops: BitClout’s “Social NFTs.” a whole new category of NFT.
The Cloutifieds: Get it while it’s hot! @BitsTODAY NF50 drops 💦
General absurdity: The mind behind Ethereum name drops BitClout 🤯
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
Before we dive in, which creators were making the biggest moves on NFT release day? @bitcloutsignal is on it like white on rice 🍚:
In parallel, which community projects were riding the NFT waves today? 🌊🌊 For updates on this one, we turn to @bithunt.
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: BitClout’s “Social NFTs.” a whole new category of NFT.
We’ve been building up to it for months. And now it’s finally here. Currently, non-fungible tokens (“NFTs”), which are unique units of data stored on blockchains, are predominantly ‘minted’ (created) on Ethereum, which is the most popular ‘general purpose’ blockchain. Now you can mint NFTs on BitClout too. LFG! 💯💣💥
Why are NFTs on BitClout special? Well, BitClout just became the leading social platform to integrate NFTs. Right now, all NFTs on BitClout are also posts on a feed. Said differently, any post you create on BitClout can be turned into an NFT, which other creators on BitClout can purchase and own. Don’t have a BitClout account yet? Create one here.
So … why would someone buy your NFT on BitClout? This is a great question, and will allow us to dive into a little bit of a primer on what the heck NFTs are to begin with. For one, hopefully your NFT is f*cking sick 🥵🥵🥵. If your post resonates with someone, they might buy the NFT associated with it as a sort of receipt of ownership. E.g., if @bellathorne posts something 🔥 and exclusive on BitClout, and you own the NFT associated with the post, then you have a unique relationship with that post (and @bellathorne). It’s in the word; non-fungible means the token you own can’t be replicated or replaced.
Do you own the content itself from a legal / IP sense? No (cc: @cryptolawyer). NFTs are their own ‘thing’ as it were — you don’t own the post, you own the non-fungible token, the data on the blockchain. Tying back to the receipt analogy, you own the receipt for the item, not really the item itself. But, all that said, having the 🧾 still grants you a special relationship with the creator and with the post that the receipt ties back to.
That’s your 60 second primer on NFTs. Because of the ease with which they can be created and transferred digitally, and because they can be executed with code-back smart contracts on blockchains rather than say, with brokers and lawyers, NFTs have a myriad of other exciting use cases, too 🚀🌌.
Enough about NFTs in general tho. Here’s what the NFT launch on BitClout looked like. Of course, the absolute dev wizard and madman @tijn beat everyone to the punch:
And the bidding on @tijn’s first NFT was equally swift 😤😤😤
Besides for an amazingly fast trigger finger, @tijn got his NFT out there before anyone else because he pushed the functionality live on his own node, tijn.club, before it went live on bitclout.com itself.
Just how early was @tijn? So early that @diamondhands and co. were still in the de-bugging stage when @tijn pushed NFTs live on his node 😂:
For a minute in the early evening, there was actually concern about whether transactions and NFTs minted on tijn.club would be preserved when they launched on bitclout.com. Fortunately they did, in fact, “persist”.
Regardless of bugs and persistence scares, within minutes, users were flooding @tijn’s node (good traffic day, eh @tijn 😉) to mint their own NFTs. NFTs didn’t go live on the primary frontend of BitClout (bitclout.com) until around 8 pm EST:
In terms of the UX, here’s a run-down on the v1 of NFTs on BitClout.
OK (*wipes sweat from brow*). Step one. Here’s what the mint screen looks like, which is where you create a new NFT. To get here, tap the three dots in the right hand corner of any of your past posts:
A quick rundown of the various different features here, sequentially:
Single vs multiple editions determines how many NFTs there will be for your post (ranging from 1/1 to ♾️)
Not all NFTs have to be put on sale right away. i.e. you could mint an NFT without putting it up for auction immediately (perhaps to tease a future sale 💁♀️, for instance).
Minimum bids dictate the lowest amount you’d be willing to accept for one of your NFTs.
% Creator Royalty = the % of future re-sales that will continue to accrue to you, the original creator in $clout
% Coin-holder Royalty = the % of the initial NFT sale that will be ‘locked’ in your creator coin (making others’ investments more valuable) 📈
One thing that immediately stands out to us here is that there’s limited optionality around defining auction parameters. What if I wanted to set an auction for 24 hours specifically? Or for 24 minutes? Or if I wanted to set a reserve price where someone can just buy my NFT outright without me having to accept their bid? We imagine these will be on the roadmap.
On the homepage sidebar, we also now have new tabs for ‘My NFT Bids’ and ‘My NFT Gallery’. Both of these re-direct to the ‘NFT’ tab on user profiles. There are now three toggles within this tab: “For Sale”, “Gallery” and “My Bids”. “My Bids” aggregates all the bids you’ve made on other creators’ NFTs. “Gallery” showcases NFTs you’ve purchased, and “For Sale” shows all posts that you yourself have turned into NFTs and where the auctions are still live. Here’s what the “My Bids” page, for instance, looks like once you’ve started bidding on creators’ NFTs:
Meanwhile, if you’ve minted an NFT and you’re ready to accept a bid (ca-ching! 💸), here’s what the page (under the new “My Auctions” tab on the post) looks like:
The “My Auctions” tab is effectively where you manage bids for a given NFT or decide to end an auction that’s presently live. What are the other tabs on a given NFT? “All bids” directs to the full list of bids on a specific NFT. “Owners” will showcase who the owners of certain NFTs are (e.g. once creators have elected winning bids) without needing to root through blockchain data, too.
Last but not least, what’s up with that shiny new tab option on our feeds titled “NFT Showcase?” Looks like it’s not quite ready for our eyes yet… though that promotion strategy has us raising our eyebrows 🤨. Looks like the core team is welcoming some hype on competitor social media platforms 👀👀👀. You can always count on Neil @diamondhands and gang to pull some sweet marketing hacks.
Whew. This is a doozy so far. To read the full post and catch up on all the absurdity and community reception surrounding NFTs, you’ll have to nav on over to Medium. Substack won’t let us put alllll the goods in one email :)
Link to Medium HERE.
Cheers! @BitsTODAY for lyfe <3