Bitcoin and its underlying technology have numerous applications and millennials are reaping the comforts of the set-up. One such brilliant innovation has been built over the foundation of Bitcoin technology in a newly launched social media website called ‘Yours.’ The website has been launched on Bitcoin’s testnet to test out micropayments on the social network. The website claims to offer an ‘array of payment models’ that allow users to make money through their content.
How the website works
The website operates on a simple purchase model that is wrapped in a suspenseful way leading people into buying content. Any user who puts up content on ‘Yours’ can post anything as simple as an article, blog piece, pictures or a video and can select the point at which they want a pay wall. For viewing the content past that point, people have to pay the price and in turn, the creators of the content get paid. Ryan Charles, formerly Reddit’s cryptocurrency engineer explains:
“Everybody who posts content to Yours – including articles, video, images, audio – can pick a place in their content to put a pay wall. So, if you write a compelling article with a cliffhanger, you can hide the conclusion behind, say, a ten cent pay wall.”
Tackling the problem of micropayments
The website will offer a micropayments wallet in addition to content pay walls. This has been a technically controversial area for Bitcoin as the transactional costs of the Bitcoin network have gone up in the recent years. However, ‘Yours’ has set out to repair this problem by developing a smart contract similar to Lightning Network but doesn’t utilize Segwit. It is completely dependent on Bitcoin alone and hence is very complicated in design. Yours allows users to possess their private keys and have full custodial control over their funds at all times while being able to participate in off-chain zero fee transactions with other users.
Posting and various payment models
With the ‘Yours’ testnet launched, anybody can pay for content but not everyone can post. One has to do a one-on-one demo with the ‘Yours’ team so that they can get your real-time feedback about the experience. There are numerous models allowing individuals to get paid on Yours in addition to paywalls on content. A classic endorsement model will allow content creators to earn as users pay to upvote their content. Commenters can earn when their comments are upvoted. Individuals can also invest in a creator’s content, and earn returns on the content’s income over time.
How the platform will take off and revolutionize content writing and marketing domain is to be seen.