097. Election szn sweeps the DeSocracy.
New week!
We out here fam. Approaching big @BitsTODAY edition #100 👀. What should we do for the big celebration? Seems like everyone’s all about the NFTs these days… but we’re not smart enough to figure out how to do a generative drop so we’re probably shit out of luck on that front 😂. If you’ve got ideas for how you’d celebrate if you were in our shoes, def let us know ✌️.
In any case, let’s get to the news from across the DeSo universe, shall we?
Bits on the menu tonight:
UX/UI drops: *ding ding ding* — referrals round two 🥊
Community updates 🤝: election szn sweeps DeSo 🗳️
The cloutifieds: Yacht week comes to Tampa 🔥🌴🛥️
Diamondhands’ drops 💎
#1 BuzzClout: Today’s numbers from @bithunt and @designal ⚡️
Which creators’ coins were hot on the market to start the week? Let’s find out. @designal, waddya have for us? 👀
Same goes for community projects. Anyone making waves this fine Monday, @bithunt? Show us what you’ve got 🙇.
#2 UX/UI drops: *ding ding ding* — referrals round two 🥊
After the giant saga that was the first rendition of referrals on DeSo (you can read our past issues for more on the hoopla that accompanied it), the second round of referrals is now here. Over the weekend, @nader and co. outlined their responses to previous criticism and concerns that surrounded the first program, as well as a roadmap for the second program. The scope of their review also included the tutorial program for new users, which many DeSo OGs noted was at the minimum confusing for the folks they referred, and in many cases was buggy 🐛 and didn’t work at all.
The document in which they did so and welcomed additional community feedback can be found here. What’s the net net as far as the new referral program is concerned? As always, the breaking-news boys of DeSo, @Krassenstein, outlined the release well earlier today 👇.
In addition to the monetary mechanisms, as noted in the doc on the updated referrals, the tutorial program has been revamped on the Diamond app 💎.
This includes the following changes that should make life easier on new users while also encouraging behaviors that will ideally get them to stick around:
“First, everything in the tutorial is now skippable except for setting a username. That means that, if you wanted to, you could set a username and then hit skip a few times and be done in just a few seconds. This change implicitly addresses many complaints users had about the tutorial.”
“Investing in yourself and opening up your coin for others to buy is now skippable. Additionally, even if you don’t skip this step, the flow now defaults to keeping your coin turned OFF. The latter was a difficult decision. On the one hand, many new users actually *enjoy* being invested in by the random trading bots. But, on the other hand, we heard too many reports of people making their friends go through the tutorial a second time because they DIDN’T want their buddy to turn on their coin. This was especially true of people onboarding larger creators, who care deeply about their strategy with regard to their coin.”
“the tutorial now includes a step where it encourages you to follow some active creators. The suggested follows currently includes a list of creators who were recently active.”
Some of these changes were things DeSo community members agitated for very strongly, so it’s good to see their voices taken into account 👍:
What else is on the roadmap 🛣️? For one, the core team wants to figure out a way to eliminate the Jumio KYC requirement, especially as it prevents users in certain (big) geographies from referral eligibility:
“Jumio is a very high-friction part of any app, no matter where it appears in a user’s onboarding. Getting rid of Jumio is difficult, though, because we would need to replace it with some metric that proves that you aren’t a bot that isn’t gameable.”
Finally, the team alluded to other interesting ideas that may be coming down the pike, such as rewarding new users again when they engage in certain additional actions, like buying others’ creator coins for the first time 📈.
Perhaps most importantly, even though there’s still lots to streamline, it’s good to see the core team taking community feedback into account as they plan for and execute on new releases. Now what’s needed are better systems to make the feedback process more seamless on both sides — the community needs mechanisms to easily submit feedback and ideas that they know will be processed, and we imagine the core team needs far more streamlined ways to review all feedback, perhaps ordered by community upvotes or urgency 🤝. Who is ready to buidl a solution? 🧱💪. Read on to the next section for one step in the right direction …
#3 Community updates 🤝: election szn sweeps DeSo 🗳️
What’s up on the community side of DeSo (besides providing waves of feedback on things like referrals) 🌊. It’s election szn! And while things aren’t nearly as ugly in they can get in US politics, there’s plenty of campaigning and intrigue across DeSo. Let’s get caught up on it.
First off, what are the elections for? It’s to elect 5 DeSo community members to the three-month appointment as @DesoCommunityReps. The elected’s task will be to act as conduits for community feedback to the core team, ideally alleviating some of the friction in the feedback process we described in the above section. Here’s @Matreshka with more on the initiative:
For those of you that have been living in the cage, this is a community project led by @jasondelvin and @darian_parrish where people self-select for nomination, we vote on who should represent us, and they then step up to become community leaders and primary points of contact w/ the core team. The idea is to create lines of communication that are open, consistent, and transparent. The community reps will be people who act as liaisons between the core team and the community to help address all the issues and concerns that we deal with on an everyday basis here. In turn, they can help the core team communicate with the community and assuage our concerns. 🙏
For more on the role and community discussion on it, you can listen to past recordings of town halls on the subject attached to posts like this one 🎧.
Now, voting is officially open until EOD ET on Wednesday, 10/27! 🗳️
The omnipresent @tijn of course had some solid ideas that would help make the election great, including that all candidates should put forth some basic info on their background and their motivations for candidacy 💡.
@Matreshka also very helpfully aggregated all the links for this info in one place HERE 👏. Make sure to do some research before voting, cuz you know… being informed is cool 😎!
Last but not least? Yesterday also saw an absolute meme storm go down, again stimulated by @tijn, which were then aggregated on tijn.club/reps. As writes @Matreshka, “…all the memes can be seen here … but be advised that they are definitely 18+ 💣. That said, I believe it is one of the first times in history where a meme contest was used to increase voter turnout… and it was pretty epic.” (Editor’s note: to say some are 18+ is to put it lightly lol 😂. BitsTODAY is not responsible for any meme-inflicted trauma you may recieve).
#4 The cloutifieds: Yacht week comes to Tampa 🔥🌴🛥️
Do you still have sleepless nights cuz you missed out on the legendary “BitClout” meet-up in Miami in April? Well, you’re getting a second shot. And who knows, this meet-up could be just as splashy as Miami was 💦. Look no further than @CyrusAbrahim inquiring about a yacht for the vibe ️️️️️🛥️👀.
So… now that you’re sold… what are the deets for the Tampa bay DeSo meetup? Well, for that we can turn to one of the organizers (alongside @MechellLord, @MissKatiAnn, @WilliamLaurent and others), namely @CyrusAbrahim again; the gang descending on Tampa soon already has a full itinerary brewing for the weekend after next ⛈️:
Lots of DeSo OGs we’ve talked to have noted they’ll be in attendance. A wild @nvo may even be able to swing a trip out, though he’s been running around the world a lot the past few months already. Ready to secure your ticket? As is fashionable on DeSo these days, your access will be gated via an NFT, which you can find here. At current $DESO prices, the ‘tickets’ only cost about ~$25.
Someone better take notes of all the general absurdity that goes on while you’re on the ground out here! We look forward to your reportage 😎.
Alrighttty that’s prob enough for one day. We’ll have more for you later this week. In closing, one thing we’ve got our eyes on with Halloween around the corner? It looks like @spookies is coming back for more… stay tuned from @spookiesworld to be specific 💀🔜
P.S., @IlluMEMEnati has a drop with @highkey coming too???
Thanks for tuning in,
@BitsTODAY