087. F.N.H.H. A DeSo day to remember.
Hey friends,
Welcome to another edition of the @BitsTODAY Friday Night Happy Hour! Been a couple weeks since we all convened here for drinks, $DESO convos, and lots of general merriment to boot 🍻. It’s good to see so many familiar faces (as well as some new ones!) again.
The big news today? Well, ICYMI, we all just got back from the first-ever BitClout / DeSo townhall, hosted by @nader (formally @diamondhands) on the @pulse stage earlier this evening.
Ready for a recap of what went down tonight as well as the rest of this week since the BitClout → DeSo rebrand? We’ve got you covered. Let’s dive in 🤿.
Bits on the menu tonight:
BuzzClout: Exclusive updates from @bitcloutsignal & @bithunt ⚡️
Ubiquitous UX drops: NFT transfers now operable 🔀
Roadmap update 🛣️: Recapping the first DeSo townhall 🗳️🗣️
Boomer media 📰: @nader navigates the mainstream media 🧭
General absurdity: DeSo degens ape into absurdity 🦍
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout
Since our last edition was a *special* one, we haven’t heard from @bitcloutsignal and @bithunt in a while. Gents, care to let us know which creators and community projects have been mooning 🌙 alongside the $DESO price 📈? Let’s have a look 👀:
#2 Ubiquitous UX drops: NFT transfers now operable 🔀
Before we get into some of the bigger news of the day, wondering whatever happened to the NFT transfer and burn functionality that went live a few weeks ago? Well, it’s not operable on the bitclout.com node yet, but it is live at the DeSo protocol level. As such, enterprising folks have been working hard to integrate the functionality with their own services 🧱🏗️. In fact, @paulburke launched NFT transfers on his BitClout+ product yesterday 💡:
We know there are lots of creators and projects that have been waiting for NFT transfers to go live (wen @PixelPirates v2, @charlie? 🏴☠️).
What other UX updates are next up? As always, @Krassenstein is on the beat. It looks like native video functionality will land on DeSo soon.
Does that mean we can make native video-based NFTs 🤞? Turns out the answer is likely yes! None other than @LazyNina notes they’re hard at work at making this dream a reality, which would be another differentiating feather in the cap of the DeSo blockchain ✔️:
#3 Roadmap update 🛣️: Recapping the first DeSo townhall 🗳️🗣️
Prior to the flood of news and information, media attention, and new capital and users flocking to bitclout.com after Tuesday’s announcement of the rebrand to DeSo, the community and project formally known as BitClout had been in a bit of a slump. The price of $DESO (previously $clout) was down, big projects were folding left and right or divesting from creator coins, and daily active users were flatlining. As we know now the core team was working away feverishly behind the scenes 💪.
Still, one lesson that came out of the period we often refer to as “the doldrums” (maybe the “pre-DeSo doldrums” now?) is the need for better communication between the ‘core’ team (spearheaded by @nader) and the community. @nader knows this, and on Wednesday of this week, announced that we’d have the first community townhall today 🤝:
Prior to the townhall, the community did what it does best — it sprung into action. Lots of leaders across bitclout.com got threads of their top questions going and invited the rest of the community to weigh in. For instance, OG @RajLahoti started a mega-thread that blew up with the below post 💥:
Between replies to @nader’s original post, as well as community-sourced threads like @RajLahoti’s, more than 150 questions were organized (and major props to @tijn for doing the leg work to sort, categorize, and de-dupe many of these, see this comprehensive spreadsheet) prior to the townhall. These ranged from highly technical, like the following from @katramdeen…:
To fun and light-hearted jokes that could raise a chortle from even the most battle-heartened (and perhaps embittered) “BitClout” OGs:
As for the stage for the town hall? Where else could it have been, save for in the venerable confines of the @pulse discord 💪💪💪.
What were some of the highlights from the conversation? While it just finished and we def need to listen to it again, here are a few 👇👇👇:
Next week there will be a BIG announcement about the funding of creators from the DeSo foundation. This includes developers, NFT artists, and small creators. “ so far we have invested zero dollars in this community (creators) and that’s gonna change.” -Nader
Hintings of a pretty new node coming in the next couple of weeks. This will come with all the bells and whistles including the referral program. With this replace Bitclout.com? We will see…
Verifications: @krassenstein summarized it well “A Better verification system is coming. It will use something they call “associations”. The way it works is anyone can assign verification badges to anyone else on DESO and then the nodes can decide which individuals are reliable verifiers. All node operators can contribute to a common list of verifications. Instead of a single blue checkmark you can have all different badges for different verifications (different universities, nodes, etc.)” In fact, they wrote a great event recap. You can read it here.
There have been talks with creators of multiple NFT marketplaces, and in the future DeSo will be integrated into the platforms.
DeSo is on track to switch to proof of stake by the end of the year
The big-brain boy genius known as @hpaulson pulled an absolute homie move and said he would take some notes on the town hall for BitsTODAY. And boy when we say that this man delivered, he delivered! He took 7 MF PAGES OF NOTES complete with his own critical commentary (in true HP fashion). If you know Hpaulson, you know he ain't got no time for softball mumbo-jumbo. He just wants to get down to the heavy-hitting questions. So he took matters into his own hands by jumping on stage and asking DH the uncomfortable questions himself! Good on you! Check out his notes here to get all the juicy deets.
Missed the townhall and all the points discussed in it? Was that 4am in your time zone? Fortunately, the @pulse team recorded it and should be releasing it soon. Be on the lookout!
Beyond the town hall, we’ve also noticed that @nader is increasingly active on bitclout.com itself responding to community member questions that arise organically. As an example, here’s a recent, pertinent exchange between @nader and @brockpierson re: timing around when @nader thinks DeSo and bitclout.com will be ready to warmly welcome major celebrities at scale. Short answer? It’s not quite time yet:
#4 Boomer media 📰: @nader navigates the mainstream media 🧭
After making his public debut this week, @nader has wasted no time in switching from the defensive (i.e. periodically trying to combat FUD on Twitter) to the offensive with a full-frontal PR charge. After a flood of articles came out about DeSo on Tuesday (e.g. see here from Nasdaq 📈), @nader ramped up live televised appearances, staring with a ~10 minute segment Yahoo Finance special on Wednesday morning (see here to watch the video).
Today, @nader went one step further, taking CNBC — a premier (albeit predominantly boomer) source for financial news — by storm ⛈️ this morning. Interestingly, he also struck a humble tone 🙇 in talking about the appearance on bitclout.com afterwards, recognizing that he has room to improve as a public speaker as he lays out the DeSo vision for the general public. You can watch the appearance here:
What’s the main takeaway for us in this whirlwind of TV appearances and press? For one, the effort to get out in front of the media, in general, is laudable and will help DeSo get out from underneath the burden of the baggage associated with the BitClout brand and ideally attract new users, investors, and developers buildings apps on top of it.
@Bitcloutkarma also encapsulated our vantage point on the work @nader is doing well in their post below. It’s not about being perfectly spoken at this stage. The sheer energy that @nader exudes is what’s key ⚡🔑:
#5 General absurdity: DeSo degens ape into absurdity 🦍
For those of you who have been around for a while, you’ll likely recall the time in the late spring when OG creators on bitclout.com got BitClout logo tattoos (and 5–6 figure investments from @whoami). Now that the blockchain behind bitclout.com has rebranded as the DeSo blockchain… many of us were wondering who’d be the first to ape into a tattoo parlor and enshrine DeSo forever in their flesh 💉… Well, that didn’t take long.
Three cheers for @Oltion 🥂, who got “DESO OG” inked only a handful of days after the name was officially unveiled. This is a certified TOP TEN all-time general absurdity moment for the @BitsTODAY archives 😉.
First tattoo ever for @Oltion no less? This just keeps getting better and better. We can’t wait to see who else follows @Oltion’s fearless lead…
Another #generalabsurdity shoutout for this week? If you haven’t seen the @nader x Braveheart crossover meme courtesy of @dgsus yet… you should probably check it out 🤣. We’d ride into battle with @nader… would you? ⚔️
I am @nader. And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny!
Whew, that was a doozy of a happy hour. Y’all still seeing straight? Make sure to get home safe, we’ve got work to do next week. And the week after that. And for the foreseeable future, championing the future of decentralized social. We’ll see y’all out there ✌🌌
B️est,
@BitsTODAY