Relevance Coin

@chrismessina very excited too! Rock it @dominikg

@chrismessina @adithya Thanks for the questions. I haven't heard of Quora Credits, but I'm planning to write the back story of this announcement at some point.

@chrismessina @dominikg @adithya I really liked the idea behind Steemit, which seems to operate on similar principles, but found it fell down in two key areas: 1) Almost all of the popularised content posted to Steemit is about blockchain, or about Steemit itself 2) Because of the monetary incentive, we're seeing the sort of lame comments that bots write on Instagram posts - a whole bunch of "Great post!" comment spam in the hope that someone with steem power upvotes your comment and you earn some Steem. From a quick glance, it looks like you might have solved the first issue (reminds me a bit of Nuzzel in the way content is recommended), and have a wider breadth of content, but I'm curious as to how you are tackling the second issue... or if it's even an issue, given the way your platform works.

@adithya @rossdcurrie great questions and observations. I watched Steemit with interest too, but like many platforms that are predicated on novelty or a gimmick or unnatural economic participation, I think that Refind is a great product on its own, which I've been using since its inception, and derive great value from, while also naturally contributing to. For me Refind is to web links and information what Product Hunt is to products and the future. Given that foundation, the addition of an eventual monetary or pecuniary incentive is less likely to be perverted since it aligns with existing self-satisfying and community-benefitting behaviors. In contrast, Steemit starts with perverse incentives (share content to make money) and then tries to promote productive or healthy behaviors as a second priority. Not that it couldn't, but I've never seen that model reach the necessary scale or healthy ecosystem in order to thrive and survive. I've also seen many decentralized social platforms attempt to provide more privacy-preserving or anti-establishment options against Twitter and Facebook only to find that — lacking their own locus of intrinsically motivated and diverse forms of participation — there simply wasn't enough cohesion to spin the generative flywheel of social cohesion. Thus, whether the Relevance Coin ultimately succeeds or not should not necessarily impact the ability for Refind to continue to thrive and provide value. The community is still relatively small, but the behavior of saving, sharing, and curating content is only becoming more essential in the digital media landscape, and if there is an ultimate internal currency within the ecosystem that rewards positive, productive, and reinforcing behaviors, there's a good chance that it could amplify and motivate lasting success.

@rossdcurrie @adithya it's a worthy question, but incomplete. Relevance Coins have no value today, and only have value if the entire thing works. So — there's very little reason to try to game the system today and engage in negative self-promotional activities. IOW, the arbitrage value is exceedingly low relative to a conventional ICO. I do share your concern that 'incentivizing in monetary terms' may diminish lasting intrinsic motivation to helpfully or healthily participate, but the value of a Relevance Coin (RN), today, and even tomorrow, is so specious, as to be practically negligible. To prove this statement: there is very little likelihood of liquidity for RNs any time soon, and so people who find value in Refind will continue to patronize the service as they have been, paying little heed to RNs. Those who come to Refind to earn RNs may be initially motivated, and so that might help them generate the initial "activation energy" required to give the service a go (since cold starts on any service are incredibly hard to motivate), in which case that may seduce those users into becoming proactive or healthy contributors (that's really up to @dominikg's growth funnel). Suffice it to say — the monetary value of RNs is so minimal today as to largely be a statement of intent about the future and how @dominikg intends to reward early adopters of his platform, and share any potential future success he may achieve. That's why I like this idea — there's very little risk for anyone, and upside for everyone (with a slight impact to the aggregation of wealth that @dominikg might *someday* earn if he sells or builds a self-sustaining ad business). Obviously this kind of thing won't work in a vacuum, and so I assume if there are abuses that @dominikg will necessarily crack down on them. There have been virtually currencies established in the past prior to the blockchain and they've worked... okay. But this is a different moment in time with different pressures at work in the broader ecosystem, and I'm all for this kind of experimentation, especially on a service that I've come to love so much.

@dominikg This is a really imaginative idea. I've been using Refind and enjoying it for a while, and it just keeps getting better with the more people that get on board. Godspeed.

@dominikg I'm getting a 404 on the https://refind.com/i/wallet page, fyi.

@mbmusgrove Releasing just now. Please try again in 2 minutes.

@mbmusgrove That's great to hear, thanks!

@mbmusgrove Does it work now?

@delahuntagram Nir Eyal is on Refind too. You might want to follow him: https://refind.com/nireyal :)

@dominikg Already following :)

@mdekuijper Thanks!

@helmi Thanks, also for all your help in the past!

@davanac Thanks! We have some more ideas for the Relevance Coin. Stay tuned! :)