Bill Ottman on building Minds as a transparent social platform

0:19of minds and what are the problems that your team is solving for right now yeah so mines mize.com or on mobile is an open source crypto social network everything's fully transparent very privacy focused not requiring any personal information certainly not surveilling in order to Target ads like every major social network we also are hyper focused on

0:45monetization for creators both in crypto and Fiat so we have all these different earnings mechanisms and yeah I mean for us it's all about transparency I mean everybody's reach is getting strangled on the big Tech sites doesn't matter how many followers you are you're probably only reaching a couple percent of your own followers no one knows what the algorithms are doing

1:07no one knows why you know crypto channels are getting banned different types of speech are getting banned and you know it just seems like they're doing everything backwards so we're trying to switch that we're also decentralizing as much as we can so yeah that's crazy yeah it's not easy especially when you're facing up against some of the biggest companies in the

1:29world and they have these huge Network effect and but I understand where you're coming from where it's you know a lot of people don't like the platform but we're stuck on that right now because people just don't have Alternatives like mines and that's why I'm glad that you're building it and it is an uphill battle to try and build the next social platform that the whole world is going

1:48to use it sounds like you are on the right track maybe you can talk about you know when you started building mines what did you see as creating it as a unique platform and building a competitive competitive Advantage so that you could become one of the large social platforms so one of the unique features that we have is this whole reward system for the

2:11engagement you receive and your contribution to the network and we really built that partially in reaction to the Strangling organic reach on major networks and so we actually launched a digital currency before moving to ethereum which was just a point system you would earn these points for various activities and then one point was equal to one view so

2:35you could boost your posts with points that you earned and get more views on your content because that's what creators are really trying to get and you know when you put in all this hard work and they just take away your audience from you I mean that is really you know to us highly unethical so now that we've migrated to ethereum move the point system so but now it's

3:02one token equals a thousand views so you earn the tokens then you can click the Boost button on your post and one token will get you a thousand views that is by far one of our most popular features because even though so we've got like four million users but the fact that Facebook or whoever have billions of users it's sort of irrelevant unless you can reach your own

3:25fans I mean it's like if you're in a crowd of people and no one can hear you what's the point I would rather be in a community where people can actually see what I'm saying definitely and I completely agree and it seems you know like on Facebook and these the bigger that it gets it seems you're getting less than 10 percent or five percent of even a reach without having to pay the

3:46big man to have your voice heard right so I think that the focus on organic engagement is the right way to go especially even if you just have millions of users as long as you can reach them all you're probably reaching more people than you would at least without having to pay but you do have that Creator function which is a great add-on do you know as it continues to

4:09grow it seems that these social platforms they start implementing some of that ad retargeting or ad focused where if you want to pay more you can reach more and is that something that you're looking at preventing happening with Minds so that it doesn't turn into Facebook and these other platforms I mean we're not against promotion or even necessarily paying for a promotion it's

4:37more so surveillance based promotion which to us is the unethical part of things you know if people want to you know get tokens and boost with them and you know put Revenue into the ecosystem like that's a plus we're not against advertising we're not going to limit your news feed to you know force feed ads in there like you'll

5:05always have your pure chronological news feed you know every 20 posts or so you might see a boost unless you want to you can turn that off if your mind's plus I should also mention so mines plus is our that's where most of our Revenue comes from five bucks a month but it's pretty cool because we do a REV share with it where by subscribing to mines plus you get access to this

5:27exclusive feed of content from everybody who's in mindsplus and if you post into Minds plus then you get a share of our Revenue so we take 25 of our minds plus revenue and this is in Fiat or crypto actually depending on how you pay for mines plus is how you get paid out but the analogy I make is imagine if you could submit a film to Netflix and it

5:53performed well at the end of the month they would give you a payout so that's been immensely popular as well so yeah I mean and just to I'll bring in kind of this new ad system that we have which we're calling ad mining where basically if you provide liquidity into the minds eat pair you get I won't call it free but like close to free advertising So based on your

6:23percentage share of the liquidity pool you get that percentage rotation in this fixed spot that we have on the side of the news feed and you know if you pull out your liquidity you know you get all your you get all your tokens back and you also get token rewards for providing liquidity but we really wanted to bring in something with you know true tangible

6:46value for providing liquidity you know a lot and you know I'm not trying to you know denigrate any liquidity mining project necessarily but I think there is a lot of kind of nonsense out there where you're just sort of like mining for the sake of mining for the sake of mining like there's not like intrinsic value to it so and we're giving this

7:06sort of guaranteed impression value for providing liquidity on top of the token Rewards definitely and I'm I really like what you mentioned there just prior to that about minds plus you know I've heard so many people talk about hey why couldn't I just pay five bucks to the social platform and be able to turn off advertisements or be able to you know have more control over my data and

7:29it seems like the large companies don't want to do that because they make more when you know by using your information rather than actually you paying directly so I it's interesting that's actually one of your top Revenue sources right now yeah for sure I think sustainable recurring Revenue we're all learning that you know whether you're an individual content creator or a company

7:51that's what's sustainable having a paying recurring user base that's why all of these crowdfunding platforms have really taken off definitely and just to touch on your ad mining strategy I think it's genius to be able to build into the decentralized finance Network have liquidity pools so that you can get access to you know advertisements and

8:13all these other benefits on the platform at the same time I'm curious you know it seems like a balance because there will be a lot of people and obviously when you're starting up as a tech startup and integrating crypto Integrations into the platform you're going to have more crypto focused people but it also is a little bit more technically Advanced to

8:33do liquidity mining for people that are just getting into crypto or for people that are just looking for social media platforms that you know have data sovereignty but they're not necessarily into the technical aspects of crypto do you see a balancing act between you know having the usability of the platform and being able to provide rewards through

8:53you know cryptographic and Technical ways yeah that's a really really good point so our reward system is broken in three buckets you've got engagement rewards where you earn tokens for just getting comments and shares and subscribers and just normal social media things that you know everyone would love to earn for which is easy for anyone to figure out it's you know and that

9:18that reward is actually multiplied depending on how much you contribute to the network so the more active you are the more of a multiplier that you get and the other two buckets for rewards are holding rewards just for holding tokens in your on-chain wallet whichever you know web3 wallet and then there's the liquidity rewards now you know the latter two are a little bit

9:41more technically challenging but I think that the web 3 ux is really coming a long way like we did a huge integration with wallet connect and web 3 modals so that you know when you try to do it the prompt comes up like do you want to use metamask or coinbase wallet or whichever you know that's sort of becoming a standard when you're on any web 3 site and it you know yeah you have

10:03to set up a wallet but I think that's a it's not that hard it's getting easier and it's a worthy learning curve to really take control of your of your digital assets I mean it's just it's in the user's interest and it's really not that hard and now that we're seeing Bitcoin and you know the whole crypto Universe explodes so much it's becoming more and more relevant to

10:27everybody hundreds of millions of more people are are getting involved in the space and I think that if you if you ask someone you know who's like a regular Instagram user and you said Hey listen here's your two options you could pay dollars promote a post or you could provide liquidity basically get free passive advertising there's a couple of you know things you have to install and

10:54you have to you know learn a little bit about how to you know use uniswap which takes like five minutes realistically yeah and but then you're basically getting free promo so it seems like that's a pretty good deal yeah yeah I think on the business side the people that understand hey we need to save money if it takes a few steps you know then it's worth it well it's

11:19been interesting because we have already had people approach us because you know when you're on our news feed there's you'll see this little block and it says want to be promoted here and then you hover over and it explains like you have to provide liquidity and then you click it and just the unit swap liquidity modal pops up and we've had totally non-crypto

11:37people say I want to get here like show me how to get in and you know they kicked out in 10 minutes it's new but it's also a good deal so I think people are are willing to be educated I feel like that's part of our role and I think social media is a great place to help bring crypto to more people so you know if you tell people like Hey listen like

12:00gotta learn this app called metamask and super easy and you get value from it as opposed to getting value extracted from you know it's going to take time but we'll get there definitely definitely and you know part of this liquidity mining is through the decentralized finance Niche part of this industry is you know to be able to do borrowing lending asset collateralization all

12:25these kind of other Financial products which are capable once you have a liquidity pool you know not just for creating liquidity to be able to have a liquid token and to trade it around is diving into that some of the next steps or something that you're considering on top of just building liquidity for the trading of mines I'm totally open to investigating all of

12:48the above for this initial Incarnation you know it's pretty simple what we're doing we you know you have to verify your address through metamask or whatever to validate that like that addresses yours and it's associated with those pool tokens on metamask so we're basically taking the liquidity position endpoint on uniswap and associating with the address on mine so that we can you

13:10know understand your participation in the pool on the on the back end and but you know in terms of using those pool tokens in other creative ways like I'm totally open to it I think it's just sort of one step at a time definitely definitely and just to give a little bit of perspective to see where where you're at right now I know that mines has been

13:33around for a long time as a social platform and you've been growing but you just implemented this D5 strategy in right now is that right yeah we've had the tokens for a couple years but you know uniswap really it's really just in like the last year that it's it's exploded and it's an incredible tool and it just makes total sense for us to

13:57integrate with it and yeah I mean the reward system like I mentioned has been by far one of our most popular features and so now that we can really synergize with that whole world like before we were sort of isolated in our own little world but you know having the dynamic pricing and everything that comes from uniswap is just way better for everybody so

14:24people are loving it so far that's great and I think it's a great step in the right direction towards getting to the next stage of growth and I'm curious in terms of the long-term vision of Mines what do you think will want to be one of the key factors to success to get mainstream adoption right now we're working on a huge integration with Matrix protocol I don't

14:49know if you're familiar with them they're a decentralized end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol and so we're really doing a major overhaul of our messaging system which I do think is absolutely essential for mainstream adoption you know messenger is really key when it comes to social networks it's where people are spending most of their time and making sure that n10

15:13encrypted is also key so I think that's a big deal and yeah I mean ux does matter for the thing is the incentives the integration of crypto and social is key because it allows you to bring this gamification and financial incentive to social media which doesn't really exist on any major social network like you would think that one of them

15:40would have cracked that code so far but what do you get for using Instagram I mean it's a night it's a nicely designed app kudos to their designers like they're smart people but the whole thing is just rotten from the core and they're actually extracting value from you and giving you very little so I think that foreign within the next couple years the

16:07functionality on you know not just us but other crypto social alternatives you know we're going to reach parity in terms of functionality and what people expect and at that point everybody's gonna have to ask themselves like what why am I not supplementing my experience with something that actually rewards me and we're also you know investigating bringing in nfts so you

16:35can you know have your whole you know all the assets connected with your address not just erc20s but other types of ERC tokens and you know we launched a major integration with our weave which is a decentralized Content storage network earlier this year so you can optionally when you make a post post to a decentralized Content system which is really important so you know

17:01it's a it's a balance of building things that give people more freedom and rewards versus you know building kind of the standard features that people expect in a social network but you know we don't want to spin our Wheels because you can build things in a centralized way and then have to completely rebuild them in a centralized way so it's sort of yeah it's a lot there's a there's a

17:25lot and but also the good news is that if you compare all the major social media apps it's like they're all the same thing now they're pretty much it's like you got stories you gotta feed you got messenger every Snapchat Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter they're all they all look the same but to me that's that's fascinating because it's almost like there's this

17:48global social consensus happening around like the features that we expect in a platform and if we can just add this whole monetization element on it you know mine feels quite similar to that though you know you have this wallet and it you know is tracking all your earnings and all this variety of ways so I hope that honestly more networks steal

18:11that idea and because you know for us it's really just about helping creators earn and you know take their freedom back definitely I agree and I'm looking forward to that day when there is that parody between the crypto social platforms that actually reward you and respect your information and privacy as well to those large platforms so we

18:32are running out of time Bill but for people that are looking to get involved with mines use the platform try out the liquidity and AD mining what's the best way for them to learn more and to get involved yeah check out mines.com token if you want to check out anything with regards to the rewards and follow me mines.com sounds great bill I will leave all those

18:53links in the description box below for the viewers all the best with Minds moving forward looking forward to the upcoming growth and let's follow up in the near future yeah thanks for having me