The Format #025

Number 25… that means that I’ve been writing The Format for 50 weeks, almost a year. Time really does fly.

Things have come a long way since then, and they seem to be moving faster than ever, both internally (we’ve never been busier) and in the world as a whole. Who knows where we’ll be by The Format #050… 👀

Anyway here’s a quick round up of some of the more interesting things we’ve found in the past fortnight:

Telegram enables Toncoin payments for in-platform ad purchases

It’s great to see Telegram empowering content creators. Their recent decision to reward the owners of channels where ads are being shown is a great creator monetisation opportunity, and the fact that they are using the blockchain to do it is a very smart move.

The only slight problem is that the channel owners are only getting 50% of the ad revenue. As someone in our Telegram channel put best:

Right idea. Wrong math.

Adtech giants like Meta must give EU users real privacy choice, says EDPB

Who would have guessed that a company probably shouldn’t force a user into deciding whether to give away all their data or paying a monthly subscription?

In this case, the answer is the European Data Protection Board. They have stepped in to question the ‘consent or pay’ data model used by the market leader for ad targeting, Meta (and it’s about time if you ask us…).

We see the potential for another model though, one where users can pay fractions of a penny to ‘sip’ content, and the content creators can get paid a fair share for their work. Users keep their data, creators can make a living and platforms can have an ethical business model.

MeWe social network boss says blockchain can solve the TikTok problem

You might have heard the news about the potential ban of TikTok in the US. This article takes the view that this isn’t a problem with a single company or even country, it’s an inherent flaw with the current design of social networks.

Because the social media company owns all of their users data, they have complete control over it. At any point they can choose, or be pressured, to hand that data over to a government. If the user owns their own data that becomes an impossibility and the privacy and security dynamic flips on its head.

One way to give users ownership is by using the blockchain, a transition MeWe managed to make without compromising on their platform’s functionality.

Is it time to put TikTok on-chain? 👀

The Creation Generation

We’ve talked quite a lot about how Gen Alpha are native social gamers and the impact this will have on companies and the world as a whole. This paper takes a deep look at how Gen Alpha’s relationship with gaming, in particular ‘creation games’ like Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft, affects (and potentially improves) the ways that they learn.

Build the Death Star in Minecraft or learn about Renaissance artists? Tough choice.

Inside the Pitch Deck That Web3 Beauty Startup Kiki World Used to Raise $7 Million

Kiki World are an amazing example of a company using blockchain to innovate rather than just for blockchain’s sake. They are rewarding customers for participating and collaborating with their brand and these (on-chain) points can be redeemed for money. They also incentivise sustainability by using near-field communication tags to reward customers who return their finished products.

OPENFORMAT News

Another week, a new member of the team, an experiment complete and LOTS of exciting things going on behind the scenes. Here’s a few of the things that have happened in the past fortnight…

What we've learned by creating a new business model for Wordle

If you’re a long term Format reader you may remember a few months ago we mentioned an experiment we were carrying out: ‘Hyper Wordle’. Taking the app ‘Wordle’ and putting our own spin on it to test a whole host of hypotheses around how open source businesses could operate.

You can learn all about what we built and more importantly what we learnt here and you can check out a discussion me and Sarah had about the experiment here.

The Start of Something Great

This week Dom has joined our team. He’ll be joining forces with me and Andy to help deliver our upcoming ‘Compete and Reward’ product and competition- it’s starting to feel like the dream team.

With the quality of the questions he’s been asking and the grasp he has on what we are trying to achieve, you’d never guess that he’s literally only been around since Monday. You can read a bit about how he found his first week here…

“The way of working is also completely different. My previous job was much more organised and mechanical. OPENFORMAT seems to thrive on collaboration, creativity, and discussion.”

We Moved to Arbitrum Sepolia

Last time out we mentioned that Polygon’s Mumbai testnet was being deprecated and that we were going to move over to their new testnet, Polygon Amoy.

We did that, but in the process we realised that it would be just as easy to move to Arbitrum Sepolia which is quicker and has lower transaction fees. So for now our default chain is Arbitrum Sepolia, although we will be offering developers a choice of some of the most popular EVM chains very soon.

Progress Update April 24

Last week we sent out our first progress update in a while.

Our heads have been down for a few months now, but we’ve been hard at work and this update captured a few of the things we’ve been working on, and the very exciting things that we have on the way.

And that’s all for this week.

Have a great weekend, Dan and the OPENFORMAT team 👋🏽

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Sarah: “We’re going to take a picture for The Format”
Andy: *HIDES*