Est. reading time: 5 mins
Have you ever considered to whom your social media content belongs?
How do you prove that your content is created by yourself?
Can you earn by posting content on social media or online forums but not as an influencer?
These questions may not be easy to answer when you consider traditional platforms. It seems like a no-brainer - you create the content, you own it.
Actually, you are not able to prove ownership easily and almost all of the time, your content belongs to the platforms. Unless you are an influencer who makes money by advertising brands, it is difficult for you to price your content.
SocialFi
In blockchain, it is a different story. This is where SocialFi comes in. SocialFi, as its name suggests, is an amalgamation of Social + Finance. Similar to GameFi, SocialFi can be interpreted as Write-to-earn or Create-to-earn. In this case, you could create content like an NFT on the blockchain. This proves your ownership and you earn simply by creating. You can also earn by likes, comments or other forms of engagement of your content.
Recently, this concept attracted public attention due to a rising star - MONACO PLANET (MONA), a decentralized NFT/Crypto social network on blockchain that launched in November 2021. Why is it so popular?
Control of Own Data
It is well known that current mainstream social media, like Facebook and Twitter, are centralized. This means that these companies have control of user data and have the power to use them arbitrarily without informing users, even for monetary purposes. Nowadays, social media may not be a comfortable place to share private matters because you do not know when your data might be leaked.
In Monaco Planet, users are the ones who own and govern the platform. By generating content and interacting on Monaco Planet, users can earn the token (MONA). This means that the more you contribute, the more you can earn. In the future, the user community will be the one developing this social media platform with community-led proposals and actions instead of a centralized company.
Write-To-Earn Model
The write-to-earn model is another attribute that makes this project attractive. To understand it, we need to take a look at its content mining formula:
“The second month and onward
…...
Single user score = MONA staking weight x (number of followers per user/total number of followers on the platform + number of likes/total number of likes + NFT value in the wallet/total NFT value evaluated by floor price + number of comments /total number of comments)
The weekly distribution of MONA for single user will follow this formula: MONA weekly total output of content mining x (single user score/total user score)
…...”
From this formula, we can see that Followers, Likes and Comments are the three main parameters for content mining. With quality content that is acknowledged by the community, you can earn more MONA. However, we also see that having some MONA is necessary to start content mining. Where would this MONA come from?
First Month: NFT & Invitation Only
“The MONA distribution for the first month is weighted as such:
- weight of Yacht NFT users = 1.2
- weight of invitation code users = 0.3
The formula for scoring a single user every weekend is as follows:
single user score = weight x (number of followers per user/total number of followers +
number of likes/total number of likes + NFT net in the wallet/total NFT net value + number of
comment/ total number of comments)
The weekly distribution of MONA for single user will follow this formula:
MONA weekly total output of content mining x (single user score/total user score)”
We cannot ignore the market growth strategy Monaco Planet has in place for its first month after launch. To kickstart community building, Monaco Planet issued 10,000 Yacht NFTs and a by invite only mechanism.
Monaco Planet’s Yacht NFT Collection on Opensea
Upon its platform launch, people who are holding the Yacht NFT are considered genesis users. They can invite up to 5 people and start content mining to earn MONA one month earlier than the public. The floor price of Monaco Yacht NFT was once 0.5 ETH (currently 0.2 ETH) and invitation codes bid for over hundreds of US Dollars.
Different from the mining rules in The second month and onward, users do not need to stake MONA in the first month. The MONA they earned during this month can be sold on the market to those who would like to participate in content mining once the platform opens to the public on January 1, 2022. That is the reason why people are crazy for the NFTs and invitation codes. The earlier you can join, the more you can earn.
Challenges
It seems that content mining can motivate users to create high quality content and build a strong crypto community. However, Create-to-earn or Write-to-earn is not a new concept. It was once popular due to the projects Steemit and Primas in 2019. Now, both projects are stagnant. There are challenges Monaco Planet would face in the future as well:
- As content mining is closely related to followers, likes and comments, there may be situations where people would post controversial or inappropriate content to attract engagement. In this case, “Bad money drives out good” may happen. Therefore, it is important for Monaco Planet to set clear markers on what constitutes negative content, and design an effective decentralized content censorship mechanism.
- As an incentive, MONA price is one factor that users would look into. If there is a big drop in MONA value or if MONA price does not meet expectations, will Monaco Planet still be attractive enough for users to continue creating content on? We have no answers here but it is something we should consider.
- New users may be disappointed if their posts do not get enough exposure. Let’s imagine you spending a lot of time creating high quality content but your post disappears from the public discovery section soon after it is published, only because you are new here and cannot get early attention. In this case, how Monaco can support new but passionate joiners is another challenge.
It is only the second week of the Monaco Planet launch. Let’s wait and see if this ship will sail.