This is related to micropayments.
Micro-Earning is the ability to be rewarded in small monetary or financial units for activities undertaken. It is the accumulation of fractional units of a currency which, through volume, can add up.
The existing monetary system does not offer much of this since we do not deal with miniscule increments of the USD or EUR. However, with cryptocurrency, this is becoming a realistic probability.
Social media engagement is looking at a facelift due to the emergence of Web 3.0. At present, these platforms are controlled by centralized entities which own all the data along with the accounts. When operating on their servers, everyone plays by their rules.
Therefore, people are not rewarded for the engagement, at least financially. This is all going to change with the next evolution of the Internet.
We all know data has value. This is something that we see in most aspects of life, especially the digital realm. Due to advancement in communication systems, as well as computation, data flies around at a phenomenal rate. The parsing, monitoring, surveillance, and collection is incredible.
As with social media, the generators of the data are not compensated. Here is where Micro-Earning enters. This can be something that is done manually or automated.
For example, few would argue that Tesla is benefitting greatly from the collection of data for their self driving electric vehicles. This will financially benefit the corporation and the shareholders but not the vehicle owners (unless they own stock). Micro-earning can change that.
What if, each time the system collected data, it paid the one who created it? In this instance, a payment would be sent to the vehicle owner's wallet as an exchange. Of course, the process would be fully automated with the transactions happening without human involvement. Also, the amount might not be significant on its own yet, if done multiple times a day, could add up.
We are moving deeper into a world where artificial intelligence is becoming a large part of society. The present training process requires a lot of data to run through these neural networks. Fortunately, the amount of data people are generating is only increasing.
The drawback is they are giving this away.
Micro-Earning can reverse this.
Social media is worth tens of trillions of dollars. When we add up the value of these corporations along with all the revenue generated on marketing and other business functions done on these platforms, the totals get very large. We know that YouTube and Twitter have the potential to become even larger due to the hundreds of millions of monthly users.
The challenge here is the Web 2.0 model is really skewed. Some assert that one of the reasons Elon Musk bought Twitter was because of the incredible amount of free data that is generated. This is a viewpoint that is tough to argue.
Web 3.0 has made a lot of promises. In addition to account ownership, the potential for rewarding activities such as those done on Twitter is possible. With a cryptocurrency system, such as the Proof-of-Brain (PoB) on Hive, votes can be given which have a monetary value. Under this situation, the ones making the posts, whether long form or microblogging, are rewarded because upon the votes received.
When it comes to the latter, along with comments, this can be mostly considered Micro-Earning. The payout might be only a fraction of a cent yet, as stated, the total can really add up.
One of the projects on that blockchain that falls into this category is LeoThreads. Here we see people microblogging about things will getting paid in small increments. A vote tends not to be worth a great deal individually, especially with prices depressed due to the bear market. Nevertheless, people are rewarded for their ideas that are expressed online.
One of the reasons why Micro-Earning is not discussed is the fact that most networks cannot handle it. Micropayments are hindered if there is a system that has a high cost to transact. In other words, if there are transaction fees, this concept is completely eliminated.
We can easily see why banks will not engage in this. Would someone pay a $35 to send a few cents to another account? Obviously not. Hence, we are relegated to a network system that doesn't have fees.
Within cryptocurrency, the two biggest blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, both have transaction fees. Also, when the activity picks up, the costs on a per transaction basis increases. During the bull market, it was not uncommon to see fees of $50 or more on each network.
Therefore, the only way for a micropayment system and, thus, Micro-Earning, to succeed is for it to be feeless. This is the only way for it to work.
