Hi 
I understand you are concerned about your data privacy and you are not comfortable with it. As a cryptocurrency enthusiast, I feel the same way too. However, we are unable to build TORUM on any decentralized network, including Hive blockchain, because the decentralized tech is not mature enough to support and house a data-exhaustive application like TORUM.
As clearly stated in our whitepaper, we will begin decentralizing the entire platform starting from our fourth development era — Maturitas. Depending on the decentralized tech’s maturity, we might develop our own blockchain or just proceed to use another blockchain if there is a suitable one. We will be placing full priority on data privacy, censorship-resistance, etc at that point.
But, we do pledge that we will not be using our Landers’ (we called ourselves Landers on TORUM btw) data in our whitepaper. For example, we will not be running any form of programmatic advertising on TORUM in the future. As long as it uses our Landers’ data, we will refrain ourselves from it.
About the issue of usefulness, I would respectfully ask that you don’t relate TORUM to Ponzi Schemes. Ponzis promise you fixed return and lucrative investment. I can assure that you will not find or hear such nonsense from TORUM. Ultimately, the usefulness of XTM depends on the community. If no one is on TORUM, even the best feature of using XTM becomes useless.
In fact, TORUM is meant to solve crypto Ponzi Schemes because we want to connect cryptocurrency enthusiasts and leverage on our network power to combat this issue. While we are open to criticisms, being related to Ponzi schemes is quite a big no-no.
You asked about our whitepaper, I have attached our English whitepaper V1.0 here (we do not have Italian translation at this moment, sorry about that) : https://whitepaper.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/torum-whitepaper-V1.0-EN.pdf
You raised concern about our business model. Our business model surrounds our ERC-20 utility token — XTM. We realize that the existing coins rely too much on hype to survive and hype is not sustainable. By building an entire ecosystem of utility around XTM, we are able to create sustainable value back to XTM.
For example, you want to bid for an ad slot on TORUM (this feature is still far from release), you will need to bid using XTM. I use this example because you mentioned advertising in your comment.
Having a token that has value (XTM), we can minimize advertising and promotion effort because our Lander community will spread TORUM on their own. It might take some time for TORUM to become widespread, but word-of-mouth marketing is a solid and effective way of promoting (I am sure you agree with this). This answers your concern on how we grow mainstream.
Earnings can come in many ways for TORUM. For example, we will be having an integrated cryptocurrency exchange in our next phase, so there is revenue whenever our Lander is trading. The advertising bidding is also an example. If you are afraid to lose the bid, you will proceed to buy XTM from the market. You see, the demand logic is there. The community is the last puzzle to TORUM’s success.
About the Bot and Spam issues, we are aware of the challenges before we start our project. We are implementing a reporting feature and intend to include the community to maintain the content and Lander quality on TORUM. Imagine the community itself is responsible for regulating the community.
On a side note, TORUM NEVER EVER intends to be another Facebook or Twitter. Our vision is to become the central social gathering hub for the crypto space. This means TORUM and other mainstream social media will exist together without any competition. We are meant for crypto communities and projects, not for the normies.
If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. I hope that you will not let your personal opinion get in your way. If you do not want to verify your email address or phone number, you are perfectly free to do so. You may put random characters and numbers in your registration.
Thank you. Hope you have a good day ahead. (Sorry I don’t know how to write in Italian, so I have to use English)
RE: Torum: the crypto facebook [IT-EN]