Author: Ehan

With the recovery of the crypto market, many once niche tracks have attracted people’s attention again, especially the SocialFi track has been running without a leader in the past, and its value and potential may be underestimated. BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes also predicted in a recent blog post: “If Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to rise, there will definitely be a shitcoin vertical market going crazy in the next few months.” Bulletin Board System (BBS) Network is a decentralized forum — — a public network of interconnected message boards. BBS Network, as one of the rare representative products of the SocialFi track, may usher in a bright moment with the rising market sentiment.

Conspicuous background

The financing was backed by Binance. In 2021, BBS Network received a $1.5 million seed round of financing led by Binance Labs while grayscale parent company DCG, Polychain Capital, Bancor, etc. participated in the investment, and DAOMaker was incubated.

In addition, unlike the traditional Web 2 teams aim to break the circle to engage in Web3, the BBS Network team has already had successful experience in the encrypted DeFi field. The decentralized exchange Bancor created by the founder Eyal Hertzog before was a dark horse running out of DEX, with once a market value up to 2 billion US dollars. The Bancor protocol is also one of the earliest mainstream decentralized exchange protocols.

“Decentralized Reddit”

BBS Network is a forum similar to Reddit , but unlike Reddit, BBS is decentralized and based on the EOS chain. BBS Network is a collection of all BBS boards that can run on any domain of any operator chosen in the network. All users can create a forum in which to post, comment and share ideas, while earning income from their content, truly returning the ownership and control of data to users.

An automatic revenue sharing ecosystem for BBS, consisting of BBS administrators (owners), community moderators, content publishers (posts), operators (web hosts), developers (new features). Each post is actually an NFT, and users can create, buy, sell and earn money in the advertising slots of their posts. All advertising and NFT revenue will be shared transparently among ecological contributors, and the ecology has multiple ways of contributing and earning.

BBS is censorship resistant, data on BBS is protected by blockchain, meaning all BBS users, content and wallets can always be recovered and can never be censored, shut down, seized or altered by anyone, not even BBS. BBS owners can choose between operators in the network, allowing different content policies.

Project Mechanism

Every post on the BBS will be stored as a corresponding NFT, and the publisher can set an initial price for each NFT (post). Most posts may start with a relatively low price ($0.30 by default), increasing as new buyers are added.

BBS adopts the NFT bidding model, and anyone can buy it. Buying any posted post is buying that NFT, including the ad slot for that post, with a new round of offers at least 30% higher than the original price, and upon sale, the previous owner of the post will receive 10% of the purchase price (whether they are in How much revenue is earned from advertisers when owning a post), and the remaining difference (20%) is divided equally between the publisher (the original author of the post) and the BBS administrator (responsible for the review and maintenance of the BBS).

The result of this kind of bidding is that as the post continues to be auctioned, the owner of the post will bear potential risks and rewards, while the BBS administrator and the original publisher can also continue to obtain benefits. This rich transactional data can serve as an invaluable signal to predict the potential popularity of posts in the community, enabling value-based content curation for the first time.

Economic system

●Token model

BBS Network adopts a mechanism of main currency + multiple sub-currencies: the main currency is BBS Token ($BBS), and the sub-currencies are community tokens (CT).

BBS Token, as BBS Network’s native token based on ERC-20, is a standard payment method accepted by all BBSs for NFT and advertising purchases to ensure financial interoperability between nodes and shared incentive systems. In addition, holders will be able to participate in BBS DAO governance through staking and voting, or they can choose to lock their tokens for up to several years to improve governance rights and earn staking rewards.

Community Token (CT) is the internal currency of the forum, denominated in US dollars. Each BBS has its own community token, and the BBS community also regularly provides members with CT rewards, such as users joining, visiting, purchasing and other behaviors will receive corresponding CT rewards. This means that everyone can establish a BBS community and come up with a community token, but the value of their community tokens depends on the operation of the community. The liquidity between tokens is cashed out through the Cashier system in BBS that enables CT holders to exchange CTs for equivalent BBS Tokens for cashing out.

●Economic model

The total amount of BBS Token is 1 billion, distributed according to the following proportions: 50%, Engagement mining; 20%, liquidity mining & staking rewards; 10%, funds; 10%, reserves; 10%, teams. In order to incentivize BBS users and the community, 50% of the Engagement mining is expected to be distributed to all English-based BBS participants in the BBS ecosystem in the form of daily distributions over the next few years based on user participation and contributions.

Problems

●Single function

The core message board function of BBS has some nostalgic elements. In the era of attention economy, the presentation method of content on the site is relatively simple. Compared with the rich and mature built-in functions of traditional social media platforms, the logic of BBS products is simple. Currently, There has not been a major breakthrough in the use of functions, and it is facing fierce competition from various SocilFi products that are constantly emerging. In addition, the motivation for people to spend money to buy posts is still insufficient, and it does not seem to be attractive enough except as a means of speculation, not to mention that speculation is risky. The change of users’ mentality and the migration of usage habits are also great challenges for the BBS platform.

●Right confirmation

For the creator economy platform, creators and their original production content are the greatest productivity. Although BBS Network has designed an ecology for the circulation and realization of content, many specific issues have not been clearly defined, such as whether the content of the post can be transferred, whether it involves infringement without the knowledge of the original author, and how the proceeds will be distributed if the content is transferred , is this contrary to the belief in Web 3 that the data that truly belongs to the user is right? Another example is that the dissemination of false information and even rumors is also a red line for the content platform. In addition, BBS Network, as a public database, will not be censored, closed, or seized or changed by anyone, which also has potential risks and negative impacts that cannot be avoided in content management.

●Traffic bubble

On the one hand, the BBS project is still in the early stage, and the user base is relatively small. The mechanism of using tokens to motivate users to be active is actually suspected of making a bubble. On the other hand, there is room for development but sustainable operations and a healthy ecology are required. After the traffic bubble dissipates, whether BBS can maintain the intrinsic value of the product has yet to be tested by the market and users. During this period, the project party needs to continue to build and improve.

Face the challenge

The powerful Web 2 social media giants have always been a mountain that the SocialFi track cannot overcome. For the SocialFi project, user volume and usage habits are two major pain points. Compared with the huge user base of traditional social media platforms, the user base of Web 3 is too small, which lead to the subdivided Web 3 social products are even more niche. The Damus app and the decentralized social protocol Nostr, which have recently been popularized by many Twitter stars, have received huge traffic and attention in the short term, but the user activity cannot escape the rapid decline after the short-term popularity dissipates. SocialFi needs a very strong ability to go out of the circle to really usher in the highlight moment, and only Socialfi products that can really play can attract users and ultimately retain users. As one of the representatives of SocialFi’s real-life application scenarios, BBS may wish to look forward to whether its future performance can withstand the test of the market and users.

Reference:

https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/binance-labs-leads-$15-million-seed-round-for-bbs-network-421499824684903126

https://daomaker.com/company/bbs-network

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