ReadON Letter #4: Meet Soul Card and Fans Art
Product & Design
Some exciting designs about soul-bound NFT
At the beginning of the year, Vitalik Buterin elaborated on his ideas about soul-bound NFT.
A common criticism of the “web3” space as it exists today is how money-oriented everything is. People celebrate the ownership, and outright waste, of large amounts of wealth, and this limits the appeal and the long-term sustainability of the culture that emerges around these items. There are of course important benefits that even financialized NFTs can provide, such as funding artists and charities that would otherwise go unrecognized. However, there are limits to that approach, and a lot of underexplored opportunity in trying to go beyond financialization. Making more items in the crypto space “soulbound” can be one path toward an alternative, where NFTs can represent much more of who you are and not just what you can afford.
When designing who could be curators and how they would implement voting power for content, we found that relying solely on a tradable NFT would make things strange.
If the goal is for governance power to be widely distributed, then transferability is counterproductive as concentrated interests are more likely to buy the governance rights up from everyone else.
If the goal is for governance power to go to the competent, then transferability is counterproductive because nothing stops the governance rights from being bought up by the determined but incompetent.
We recognize that the selection of a curator should take into account two things simultaneously: commitment and competence. The former can be measured by the amount of money invested and how long the investment has been staked, while the latter should consider the person’s knowledge, creative ability, and influence in the particular field.
Taking the blockchain world as an example, curators should have different knowledge in the following areas such as bitcoin, public chain, trading, investment, Defi, Gamefi, stablecoins, etc. We wanted to design a soul-bound NFT that reflected the curators’ distribution of interests and reputation. If all goes well, Vitalik should have a very high interest and influence under the Ethereum topic but score lower under Gamefi (maybe he doesn’t have time to play World of Warcraft anymore, Lol)
While a lot of on-chain transaction data can be used to mint soul-bound NFT, they are not enough. People will post their opinions, insights, and articles, but most of this information is not yet on the chain. It would be a great way to get these data from traditional internet platforms and dump them into the NFT, where users already leave enough data.
Following this idea, an NFT minting campaign is being designed and will be launched in August. The participating users can mint their past creative abilities as soul-bound NFTs. These NFTs will serve as credentials for their right to interact and govern in the ReadON universe.
Can’t wait to meet it!
Community & Growth
The OG Role has been added
Benefits of OG role: Genesis NFT will be airdropped. Then, in the future, there will be some activities with benefits only available to people who Hold the Genesis NFT.
At the same time, we have reduced the difficulty of obtaining whitelists.
Debate Campaign
On this week’s debate topic: In some countries of the world, guns are legal and in others they are not. The users had a heated discussion about their views.
From @else：
I support the prohibition of guns. In my mind it doesn’t even make sense to argue about it. I hear pro-gun people saying they don’t trust govt but if govt ever decided to attack it’s citizens, no guns would be enough to protect you.
Others mention protection of their property — no property should be more valuable than a life — anyone’s life.
Protection of your own life — in most cases we hear about more accidents that actual protection, kids getting their hands on fathers gun, mass shootings at schools etc.
And it goes without saying that pro-gun people are in most cases a certain type of people, already aggressive, with strong political ideas or low educated living in rural areas.
It’s not a coincidence that if you compare data from the US (where laws in some states allow the usage) and EU (that prohibits the usage of guns by default, except for some cases) the amount of gun related accidental loss of life &mass shootings is far less. Add to this that we’re living in a weird timeline, equipping people with guns in such times would probably be disastrous.
Yes, there probably should be exceptions but the requirements should be very strict because, if you think about it, occasions we’ve heard that someone successfully used a gun for the right purpose are really really low in comparison with cases where too much damage was done.
Fans Art
For ReadON, several adorable images have been made by our supporters. Thank them for their thoughtful creation. The artworks below were made by @vikunsiy and @Victoriak and feature watercolors and modernist painting styles.
Engineering & Safety
The following features are finished and in the testing phase
- Anti-Cheating SDK
- NFT marketplace
- Mystery case minting and unboxing
- Related articles
- Reading time monitor and reward system
About ReadON
ReadON is a decentralized content distribution platform which has created an incentive mechanism for consumers, curators and creators, along with a unique Topic-bound NFT design. ReadON seeks to help users efficiently and freely access quality content, break information silos, and explore a real new world.
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