Author | defioasis

Recently, Binance founder CZ shared his idea of time-based tokens, where KOLs tokenize their time. The basic concept is that anyone can pre-pay an amount to a KOL to send a message, allowing the KOL to act as a consultant-like figure and earn compensation based on their expertise and fame. CZ’s main proposal advocates using BNB as the payment token without launching new tokens. Prior to CZ’s idea, attempts at KOL tokenization — such as Friend Tech, and Clout and Tribe Run, both invested in by AllianceDAO — had been made but ultimately ended in failure. Meanwhile, another platform, Time Fun, backed by AllianceDAO and Solana core members, continues to explore time tokenization with ongoing support from Solana co-founder Toly through consistent retweets.

Unlike CZ’s approach of using BNB as a payment method and avoiding the issuance of new time tokens, the core of Time Fun revolves around creators (celebrities/KOLs) issuing their own time tokens and using these tokens as a payment medium. In simple terms, after a creator launches their tokens on Time Fun, users can purchase them on the platform’s internal market. Once the internal market cap reaches $100,000, the tokens are launched onto an external DEX. Users can hold a certain amount of time tokens to join the creator’s chat group or pay the required time tokens to access interaction opportunities, including DMs, voice calls, and video calls. This means that before the tokens gain utility, creators must first issue their own time tokens, which can essentially be seen as a variation of celebrity-issued coins, since only a celebrity’s time holds value. [Note: Going forward, “celebrity” will be used in place of “creator,” with KOLs considered a subset of celebrities.]

Since Trump launched his own TRUMP Memecoin, Trump’s wife, Argentine President Milei, and leaders of some smaller countries have successively introduced their own tokens. Amid this trend, incidents of celebrity or government official accounts being hacked to post fake CA (contract address) have become increasingly common, making the verification of the authenticity of celebrity-launched coins a significant challenge. Another issue is that celebrities often fail to take on management responsibilities for their tokens after launch. Time Fun, to some extent, offers solutions to both of these problems.

First, celebrities launching tokens on Time Fun must go through at least two layers of verification: binding their Twitter account on the Time Fun platform and undergoing manual verification by the platform. Once the manual verification is complete, the celebrity is granted a Time Market Code, which is used to set the payment amounts required for joining chat groups or accessing DMs/voice calls/video calls. The former is priced in token denomination, while the latter is priced in USD denomination, but both are paid using time tokens. Only after completing these settings can the celebrity launch their own time tokens.

After a celebrity launches their tokens, users can pre-pay a certain amount of time tokens based on the amounts set by the celebrity to gain interaction opportunities. Of course, celebrities can refuse DMs or calls, and the pre-paid time tokens will be refunded. However, Time Fun has implemented a response rate and user rating mechanism as incentives. A low response rate from the celebrity or low scores from users dissatisfied with the celebrity’s performance in private chats could, in theory, affect the utility of the celebrity’s time tokens, which in turn could further impact the token’s price.

Currently, the most active participants on the platform are the investors behind Time Fun, such as Solana’s co-founders Toly and Raj, and AllianceDAO co-founder QwQiao. These individuals with investment and ecosystem backgrounds provide Web3 entrepreneurs with direct access to high-level figures. However, if the platform aims to break out and gain broader appeal, it cannot remain limited to celebrities within the Crypto circle. Bringing in non-Crypto or Crypto-weakly-related celebrities, or even national presidents, poses a significant test of the team’s and investors’ real-world resources and influence. Time Fun’s CMO, Pedro, recently stated in the community that they plan to onboard some OnlyFans creators. Friend Tech, which once took the spotlight, sparked a wave of KOL tokenization largely by attracting a significant number of OnlyFans creators.

From the perspective of the product’s trading structure, Time Fun’s celebrity token trades can be categorized into three scenarios: trading limited to the platform’s internal market, trading on the platform’s external market, and trading directly on a DEX without using the platform. It’s worth noting that whether trading on the internal market or after the tokens have been launched to a DEX external market, users who deposit USDC into the Time Fun platform to trade time tokens can enjoy gas-free transactions under a non-custodial wallet.

(1) Trading Limited To The Platform’s Internal Market

Although the discussion above has focused on “celebrities launching tokens,” in the actual token launch process on Time Fun, the platform itself takes on the role of Token Creator for any celebrity. This, to some extent, may help celebrities mitigate certain legal risks associated with launching tokens.

In internal market trading, users are required to pay a fixed fee of 0.5 USDC to the platform as the Token Creator for each transaction. After deducting this 0.5 USDC, a total of 2.15% of the USDC amount exchanged by the user is distributed among multiple entities: 0.87% is allocated to Time Fun as fee revenue, 0.15% is allocated to the Time Fun reserve address (removed from circulation), 1% is allocated to the celebrity’s address, and 0.13% is allocated to the Bonding Curve (which may flow into a award pool).

(2) Trading On The Platform’s External Market

Time Fun’s external market trading refers to the process where, once a celebrity’s time token reaches a market cap of $100,000, its liquidity is migrated to the DEX Raydium, with USDC as the trading pair. The total supply of any celebrity’s time token is fixed at 100,000, meaning that when the price reaches $1, the liquidity migration takes place. After successfully launching to the external market, trading can still be conducted within the platform.

In the platform’s external market trading, the platform, acting as the Token Creator, charges 1.5% of the USDC paid by users when exchanging for time tokens. This amount is distributed among multiple entities: 0.575% is allocated to the celebrity’s address, 0.7% is allocated to Time Fun as fee revenue, 0.15% is allocated to the award pool, and 0.075% is allocated to the Time Fun reserve address (removed from circulation).

(3) Trading Directly On A DEX Without Using The Platform

When trading celebrity time tokens directly on a DEX or DEX aggregator without using the Time Fun platform, no USDC fees need to be paid to either the platform or the celebrity.

For users, in addition to trading and spending time tokens, holding time tokens and staying active on the Time Fun platform may allow them to receive rewards from the award pool in the future. However, the award pool is currently in the accumulation phase and has not yet started formal payouts.

For celebrities, income is earned in two ways: through a tax on user trades within the platform, and by receiving 94% of the USDC returned after users pay time tokens for DMs or calls, which are then sold on a DEX. Depending on the donation percentage set by the celebrity, 0–100% of the received USDC income can be donated to charity, with the remainder serving as the celebrity’s net profit.

For the platform, the primary way to generate revenue is by taxing user transactions within the platform. However, neither the platform nor the celebrity earns income when traders conduct transactions directly on the external market, such as Raydium. As a result, actual revenue is limited by the scale of deposits into the platform and the size of its user base. On-chain data shows that in the two weeks since its launch, as of March 12, Time Fun has captured approximately 422,000 USDC from user transactions and collected about 2,130 USDC in total revenue as the Token Creator in the internal market. To boost platform visibility and revenue, it is even more critical for the platform to focus on attracting non-Web3 traffic celebrities to join.

From an overall perspective of the product’s design, Time Fun still has several areas that need improvement. First, the platform needs to support direct connections with external wallets. Currently, it only supports registration and login via email, after which a non-custodial wallet is generated and linked to the platform. This design may aim to provide a more convenient onboarding experience for Web2 celebrities and offer a gas-free experience within the platform. However, it comes with drawbacks: the platform is limited by its deposit scale and the number of depositing users, and those who purchase tokens directly on a DEX cannot log in via wallet connection to utilize the tokens’ utility, ultimately reducing them to speculative tools. A notable phenomenon is that while the number of addresses meeting the minimum token holding requirement qualifies them to join celebrity chat groups, the actual number of people joining these groups is far lower than the number of qualifying addresses.

Another significant issue is that the time tokens paid to celebrities for DMs or calls are directly sold on a DEX and then returned to the celebrity in USDC. This means that the act of users engaging in DMs or calls with celebrities is essentially a sell-off. While the demand for interacting with celebrities will persist in the long term, during periods of low trading activity, the token price will face continuous downward pressure. The recently introduced reserve mechanism mitigates this to some extent by setting aside a portion of transaction fees as reserves to reduce the actual circulating supply.

Finally, the platform still lacks a user-sharing mechanism. Spontaneous user sharing is a key driver in expanding the platform’s user base. Most users share content with the goal of profiting from celebrity time tokens, but setting aside the transactional aspect, the platform could introduce a “pay-to-unlock content” sharing model. After sending a DM to a celebrity and receiving a response, users could choose to set the celebrity’s reply as “hidden” or “partially hidden” and share the DM question publicly, such as on Twitter. Other users interested in the content could pay a certain amount of time tokens to unlock and view it, with a portion of the proceeds allocated as income to the celebrity and the original asker receiving a token reward. Interesting questions paired with celebrity responses could enhance user engagement and the platform’s appeal.

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