Will Elon decentralize Twitter?
GM, we take the latest Web3 news and translate it into plain old English - so you can stay up to date, without your eyes glazing over.
In today’s edition:
Will Binance help Elon decentralize Twitter? And what would that even look like?
Knock knock, blockchain technology is entering the home...
RESOURCE: Goats, Blockchain & the Future of Money (a TED Talk) ~9 mins
ICYMI Luna are doing something kinda genius...
Terms used (click for translation):
Blockchain, Protocol, NFTs.
Will Binance help Elon decentralize Twitter? And what would that even look like?
Ok, this one is a doozy, so prepare yourself.
Apparently Binance (the worlds largest crypto exchange) helped fund Elon's $44 billion bid to buy Twitter.
And now everyone is wondering if they've been brought on to help decentralize Twitter.
So what in the world does that mean / what would a decentralized Twitter even look like?
In a nutshell, it'd mean that the computer servers that run the platform wouldn't be owned by Twitter.
Instead, the platform would run by thousands of individually owned servers around the world.
In other words there would no longer be a central authority (in this case, Twitter Inc.) that could make blanket rulings over how the platform would run.
The elevator pitch of this new system is: you take power away from tech giants and task users with self-moderation.
This opens up many cans of many different worms and no one really knows how this will actually work.
So instead, here is how it could work (but keep in mind, it's still anyones guess):
Moderation
The Twitter feed would look and feel much the same, but you would no longer post to a generalized public feed.
Instead, you would post to 'groups' (similar to FB groups) and anyone that was in that group would see your post in their Twitter feed.
Each group would have its own set of rules - if you break them, the moderators can kick you out.
Monetization
Ads still exist, but instead of Twitter taking 100% of ad revenue, it's shared.
Let's say ads are attached to popular posts and advertisers pay .10c every time their ad is viewed, the revenue share might look something like this:
The tweet creator gets 40% (.04c)
The tweet viewer gets 40% (.04c)
The server hosting the tweet gets 10% (.01c)
Twitter gets 10% (.01c)
This encourages users to create great content and engage on the platform, while incentivizing individuals to provide computing power in exchange for passive income.
Twitter Inc. loses ad revenue, but saves $50M per month on data storage costs.
(If this all sounds too good to be true, that's because it probably is - but hey, we can dream!)
Scaling
How do you make sure there are enough individuals offering a place to store the 12 terabytes of new data that is created and stored by Twitter each day?
Good question! No clue, but at least it's not the 4000 terabytes that Facebook creates daily.
Regulation
This issue feels like more of a brick wall than it does a hurdle.
Each country has a different set of laws that cover illegal content, copyright infringement, hate speech, data privacy and security.
If there isn't a central authority that governments can work with to make sure the platform is compliant with their local regulations, it'd be easier to outright ban it than allow it.
Ok, that's it. The end ( see gif).
Knock knock, blockchain technology is entering the home...
This article chronicles all the ways that blockchain technology is entering your home.
It's cool! But a tad lengthy, so we read and summarized each new product for you:
Matter - the blockchain-based protocol that lets any smart device speak to any other, regardless of factory compatibility.
Whygrene - lets you turn your house into a mini power plant, by storing and selling your excess solar energy back to the grid at peak times. Kind of like if a Tesla Powerwall used crypto payments.
OliveX - an app that pays NFT holders to exercise, similar to Step'n, but the NFT's cost $4 (as compared to Step'n's $1200).
Notable mention: decentralized streaming was theorized.
The basic concept being, your monthly subscription fee is split and paid out to the creators whose content you actually watch.
That's it! Short and sweet :)
Resource of the day
Goats, Blockchain & the Future of Money (a TED Talk).
~9 mins
ICYMI Luna are doing something kinda genius...
You know how some folks keep a stockpile of gold, because they don't trust banks?
It gives them peace of mind to know that if the bank collapses, their wealth won't go with it.
Terraform Labs are doing something similar with their stablecoin, UST.
(Stable meaning that it has to stay pegged to exactly $1 USD in value, per coin).
But what if everyone sells their UST coin at once, collapsing it's price and rendering it worthless?
Well, Terraform Labs have been buying up the digital equivalent of gold (Bitcoin) as a safeguard.
The idea being that if they need to help stabilize the UST price and buy a bunch of their own coin to counteract any dangerous selling pressure - they can use their Bitcoin reserves to do so.
So far they've stockpiled over $1.5 billion dollars worth of BTC, with the aim of accumulating $10B total.
Smart!
Your Daily Dose of Web3
Coinbase's NFT Marketplace gains less than 150 users in first day open to public
Crypto gaming is growing, but can it reach people outside of the web3 world?
Alright, that’s it for the week!
Love to the family,