Publish0x is and has always been a crypto agnostic blogging site. What this means is that it doesn't have a single token that's used for all tips. Contrary to Bitcoin Cash for noise.cash or LEO for LeoFinance, you can always earn different tokens on Publish0x and these also tend to change over time. When I first signed up almost a year ago, tips were paid in Bounty0x and Hydro. The site has since seen tips in BAT, DAI, and Loopring. Right now, they pay out ETH, Ampleforth, and, most recently, FARM.
In this article, I want to discuss whether this is a curse or a blessing for the service. This one will obviously come down to personal opinion and I'm quite aware that this is probably a quite controversial topic. Nevertheless, it's something I wanted to discuss for quite a while now and not everybody has to agree with everything I write, so here we go!
Let's start with the obvious advantages of the system. For Publish0x, being crypto agnostic allows them to operate at a lot less risk than services focused on a single token. For the sake of the argument, just pretend that Bitcoin Cash would loose 100% of it's value because of reasons. This obviously won't happen, but if it did, it would most likely be the end of any service only using this token. read.cash and noise.cash are completely reliant on the well being of BCH. Without it, both sites would be done for immediately. Now if FARM lost all its value over night, it would certainly still be a hard hit for Publish0x but the service wouldn't terminate because of it. FARM would be removed from the list of tokens used for tips and replaced by something else. Everybody would have lost some money in the process, but the show would go on.
The other huge advantage is that the listing and delisting of different tokens allows Publish0x to use tokens favorable to them. With the huge growth of the platform in 2020, they are now in a position where token issuers will come to them to try and have their token listed as that's bound to generate a lot of visibility for their token. By doing token specific writing contests, special events, and a lot more, Publish0x can create income streams for their service, effectively reducing the amount of money they actually have to pay out for their tips.
At the same time, this allows users to learn about new and potentially interesting crypto projects. When they added Ampleforth and Farm, it's safe to assume that a healthy portion of the user base heard about that token for the first time. Still, this is no longer on the strictly positive site in my book because this does come at a price, one that is exclusively paid for by the users. There are two inherent issues with the changing tokens: Minimum Withdrawal Amounts and Fees.
I still remember how it felt getting a Hydro or Bounty0x tip before I became an author myself. Because of the tiny amount you got and the high minimum withdrawal amount for both tokens, getting these as first tip of the day felt really bad. Ever getting to the minimum required amount would have taken months. By splitting the tips between different tokens, it becomes a lot harder to reach the withdrawal amount for anybody that's not writing articles himself. This might seem like a non-issue if you are earning tips with your own articles, from a reader-only perspective, though, this is quite disheartening. What made things worse for me back in these days was that I really had no use for neither Hydro nor Bounty0x in the first place. So even if I had ever made it to the required amount, I would have received some random tokens sitting somewhere in one of my wallets.
This also serves to highlight the second issue - fees. It may be cool to gather all these different tokens but at the end of the day, especially if you are an active author, you publish to Publish0x to earn money. Sure, this is not the deciding factor for many and it isn't what got me to write in the first place, but it's always at least one of the motives. We put in a lot of our time to make these articles and we hope to earn some crypto in return. This also means that the tokens I earn will eventually have to be converted into something I actually care for. That's not necessarily because the tokens paid out are bad ones. I'm sure Ampleforth is as revolutionary as people said it is in all these contest articles, but the truth is, I don't care much for it. Sure, it's a stablecoin, so I could just let it sit there, but that's not how crypto works, is it? A coin that will only keep it's value according to the dollar is a loosing proposition really.
So in the end, I'll have to make the swap if I want to use my earnings for anything. And that's where the fees will take a lot of the earnings. I've made 73$ worth of Ampleforth in the first ~2 months it was used. Just to be able to swap it on a site like Uniswap, I had to pay Gas Fees of almost 10$. Afterwards, I still have to make the actual swap. Right now, swapping my Ampleforth to a token I care for would cost me almost another 12$.
So of the 73$ worth of Ampleforth, in the end about 31% are lost due to fees. If I convert again, I at least won't have to pay the setup fee again, but since new tokens are coming to the platform regularly, there are always new fees to be paid.
So taking a step back, most of the advantages of being crypto agnostic actually help Publish0x itself while the downsides mostly hurt the users. So as you might have guessed by now, I'm not a fan of the crypto agnostic concept. The only thing it does for me is reduce my earnings and obviously, I'm not too fond of that. In theory, receiving different tokens is cool, but in the harsh reality of gas fees this hurts a lot more than it helps. Maybe if Publish0x allowed to swap tips between the different tokens they currently use, this issue could be removed. At the same time this probably would lead to most people just converting everything they earn to ETH and that's probably not in the best interest of the service.
This whole situation leads to another underlying issue that might not be as obvious at first: It negatively impacts my loyalty towards the service. I certainly won't stop publishing on Publish0x, why would I? Even with all the fees, the earnings are decent and earning less is still better than earning nothing. But still, because of the crypto agnostic nature of the site, Publish0x is only another site I publish my content to, but it's not the service I'm loyal too. LeoFinance is the site that I care for (and the site this article is written and published on first!). It offers its own token and I won't ever have to exchange that to anything else unless I want to.
Being bound to a single token might be more risky, but it also helps to build a community. Ever since noise.cash started its service, I'm a lot more involved with Bitcoin Cash, just as are many other users. The amount of articles covering that token has skyrocketed. This might not be an issue right now, but the more people decide to publish elsewhere first and only copy&paste content, the worse of a position Publish0x will be in. Ultimately, the question of exclusivity will become are more pressing issue and at least in my opinion, people will be more willing to drop the crypto agnostic site instead of the service using their token.
Not being involved with any one token sounds cool in theory, it should allow you to stand on top of things. But the reality is that that's not how things work. By not attaching the service to a certain token, you are standing outside of things instead of on top of them. That's not to say that it couldn't work at all. Have one fixed token that's used all the time (say ETH) and introduce other tokens, allowing users to opt in and out of these if they want to. This could be made more interesting by adding a bonus to these sub tokens, say 20% higher tips if you are using FARM or Ampleforth. This way, using different tokens could still be "cheaper" for Publish0x while users not interested in the token wouldn't have to care about them any longer.
And that's all from me for today. What's your take on the matter? Do you enjoy the changing tokens? Thank you all for reading and see you next time!