MINDS Token: The New Contribution Economy
Our mission at Minds is to create a free and open digital society where organic engagement is gamified, meaningful content gets incentivized, and where those who add value to the platform will get rewarded fairly for their contribution.
Over the past six months, our team has been working tirelessly on upgrading the functionality and economics of the MINDS token with help from dOrg, a web3 development collective with proven success in the space.
Since the MINDS token launched on the Ethereum mainnet in August 2018, over 500,000 members of the community have participated in the economy and the crypto industry as a whole has come a long way.
As more people have become aware of the value behind blockchain technology, the level of development energy has also increased exponentially. As a result, many new tools have emerged that create exciting opportunities for crypto projects that were not possible before.
The growing concern over excessive surveillance, censorship and bias on traditional centralized networks has only made the value of decentralization more obvious and sent people further down the rabbit hole. Users are tired of being exploited for their attention when in reality they should be the ones rewarded for their time and effort. A social network is nothing without its community.
Minds minimizes these issues with its core principles of free speech, privacy and open source software. The MINDS token provides a unique way to incentivize, measure and monetize different contributions to a social network such as creating engaging content, driving growth and supporting the token economy. Imagine earning crypto when people upvote your posts, when you gain followers, and when you bring new users to the platform. Facebook and Twitter will never pay you for creating engaging content. However, they will sell your personal data and suppress your voice whenever they wish. We built Minds so you can speak yours freely (and get paid!).
On Tuesday, March 16, Minds will be making a number of upgrades to the token using some of these new technologies to enhance the user experience and improve the overall health of the economy. The goal of these changes is to evolve the MINDS token to the next level so it can serve as a mechanism for an engagement economy that truly rewards the community for their participation and incentivizes the migration and change that our world so desperately needs.
TL/DR (too long, didn’t read):
🟡 The total supply of MINDS has been reduced from 1 billion to 250 million
🦄 We are integrating with Uniswap to enable users to pool liquidity, swap assets and earn rewards
💵 We are integrating with Transak to enable a seamless fiat <> crypto on-ramp
💰 The daily reward pool has been increased to 10,000 MINDS per day
🏆 You can now earn rewards for creating content, pooling liquidity or holding MINDS on-chain
📊 New wallet UX to more easily track rewards and transactions
📈 New token analytics page for more transparency into the token economy
🛠 We are integrating with WalletConnect to support more Web3 wallets
📜 Our full updated whitepaper can be read here
Token Supply
First and foremost, the total supply of MINDS has officially been reduced from 1 billion to 250 million. The ‘finishMinting’ task has been executed on the token address to ensure that no more than 250 million MINDS will ever exist. This change was made in order to ensure that the tokens will be fully distributed in a reasonable amount of time and to increase the percent of tokens in circulation, and is overall beneficial to the health of the economy and the allocation towards the community.
Uniswap
The most significant upgrade to the MINDS token revolves around Uniswap. Uniswap is a decentralized exchange and automated market maker for users to provide liquidity for pairs of crypto assets and swap assets seamlessly.
Minds will be integrating Uniswap into the platform to enable you to earn daily token rewards and additional promotion for your channel by providing liquidity to supported pairs. This integration will also make it easier to swap ETH for MINDS, or vise versa. This is a big step towards decentralization for the MINDS token because it provides anyone with the ability to participate in the market.
The Uniswap pool has already started to gain momentum and can be found here.
Fiat to Crypto On-Ramp
In addition to the Uniswap integration, we are also planning to implement a new platform called Transak to facilitate fiat to crypto transactions. This tool enables users to purchase MINDS or ETH using a credit card, debit card or bank transfer. This is a significant step towards increasing token adoption as it makes it far easier to purchase tokens and join the ecosystem.
Initially, only users from Europe will be eligible to purchase tokens with a credit card, debit card or bank transfer due to US regulations. Over the next few months, Transak has committed to focusing on bringing this functionality to the US. In the meantime, US users will be able to purchase ETH with a credit card or debit card and can then use the ETH to easily swap for MINDS on Uniswap.
New Daily Rewards
The daily token reward system so far has effectively distributed over 2 million tokens to the Minds community for contributing to the app. It enables the network to properly quantify and reward individual contributions, and it enables users to have complete ownership of their rewards without the fear of any interference from a middleman. It also provides users with a way to earn access to paid services on the Minds network, such as advertising or premium memberships from both Minds and individual users. Moving forward, we will be adding two new ways to earn daily rewards: Liquidity and Holding.
Liquidity rewards, as described above, are intended to incentivize the community to provide liquidity on Uniswap to support the ability to easily swap crypto assets between one another. Liquidity providers will earn a share of the daily reward pool equal to their share of the MINDS liquidity pool.
Holding rewards are intended to incentivize the community to hold their MINDS on-chain and increase circulating supply. All you have to do to earn these rewards is maintain an on-chain token balance, and you will earn a share of the daily reward pool equal to your share of the total validated MINDS on-chain circulating supply.
All of these new rewards will be reflected in your wallet, which will be getting a UX upgrade to help you keep track of all of your daily rewards and transactions.
Token Analytics Dashboard
Another significant upgrade is the development of a real-time analytics page for the MINDS token economy. Our off-chain token system has been extremely beneficial for scaling adoption of the token, but it has lacked the transparency and auditability of the on-chain system. This analytics console helps shed light on the supply and adoption of the token in its entirety.
The MINDS token analytics can be viewed here.
Wallet Connect
We also will be adding support for many more web3 wallets. This will ensure that more crypto users are able to seamlessly onboard to the Minds platform with their native wallet and is another crucial step towards increasing adoption and improving UX.
This functionality will also be introduced to the mobile app so that you can use the same wallet across both your mobile device and web browsers.
Conclusion
The upgrades to the MINDS token outlined above have been developed in the spirit of further decentralization, more sound and fair economics, and deep DeFi integration into the core functionality and utility of the token.
We will be releasing additional information and technology regarding all of the items discussed in this blog on Tuesday, March 16. We are excited to evolve the MINDS token to the next level, and we look forward to the community feedback.
Thank you for being a pioneer of the free and open Internet!
The Minds Team
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Key Resources
- Whitepaper
- MINDS Token page
- MINDS Analytics
- MINDS Etherscan page
- MINDS Uniswap page
- MINDS Coingecko page
- MINDS Coinmarketcap page
Banner art credit to @neutronboar