Decentralized social media is about to change today and I will be among the first individuals to take part in it. Blockchain based social media began in 2016 and it was created by @dan. Eventually he left to build EOS and the original social media blockchain forked into multiple blockchains; some decentralized while others at the mercy of handful of actors.
The Best Patreon/Substack Alternative So Far
There have been many attempt at bringing subscription rewards to creators without using centralized parties, traditional financial system and high fees. Some of the projects that were live when I joined the cryptosphere in 2017 are cannot be even found on @coingecko right now. HIVE has 15K active users with INLEO having almost 2K + another 200 more willing to pay 10 HBD per month to have some extra features.
The above statistics are taken from Graphtreon. I found another source for Substack statistic. I will share some of the statistics below. Visit the link for more insights.
- Substack has more than 20 million monthly active subscribers.
- Substack hit 2 million paid subscriptions.
- More than 17,000 writers get paid on Substack.
- The top 10 authors on Substack collectively make $25 million per year.
| Date | Substack Unique Visitors |
|---|---|
| August 2023 | 34.8 million |
| September 2023 | 38 million |
| October 2023 | 39.8 million |
| November 2023 | 38.9 million |
| December 2023 | 45.9 million |
| January 2024 | 49.4 million |
What Lead to Creation of Substack
It was a solution to a real problem targeting a very specific niche. What we have built on HIVE is not that different (except for the part about censorship resistance and low fees).
I Was Asking For This
I have been vocal for years that HIVE developers should focus on building some decentralized alternative to crowdfunding and subscription solutions. Now that we finally have a DAPP that deliver in the niche that I was asking to be served; I am going to be a part of INLEO Subscriptions from the very first day!
I am proud to say that I was a part of SteemLeo from the start when the project started out as a simple front end for finance content with $LEO Token. We have come a long way from the humble beginnings. We have expanded into
- Binance Smart Chain
- Polygon
- Arbitrum
- Maya Protocol
and we are partnering with @dashpay on top of all of this. I'm willing to bet on this growth and expect INLEO Subscriptions to succeed where others failed.
What Do Subscriber Get
We are part of a very small niche and I do not expect to see a large number of subscribers. I certainly have a great deal of value to provide. What we do not have yet is a large userbase with cryptocurrency to pay for the subscriptions. The content I write and my interactions on HIVE have been primarily for the personal satisfaction and secondarily for financial gain. I do not even optimize my voting around maximizing curation rewards.
Over the 7 years I have spent on blockchain, I have been able to build a small following and some of them have me on autovoters. I have constantly found myself not publishing content or being late to publish because I was trying to perfect and improve the content. I will treat my Subscribers as a small group with early access to prototypes and smaller pieces of insights that do not make it to regular content.
Some Trades are Time Sensitive
I have had many screenshots as above that I took in order to write about the trades I was doing and many of them were not ultimately published. I try to make my articles good for SEO and make it look like a magazine article. There were some trades I did during the time $HIVE went parabolic for a moment and there were part where I doubt anyone posted about. They were very niche moves. Subscribers will get notes without the extra polish.
From Magazine Style to Telegram Channel
This is the shift in content my subscribers will enjoy. On top of that I can provide early access to the content that are not time sensitive. This early access model is something many online creators do for their subscribers. Those who are not familiar with Telegram channels can take a look at this video.
I will not be doing the exact same thing. I can use feedback to adapt the content to help more Subscribers. Since there were already many adult content jokes flying around, I will say that the shift will be similar to going from Vixen to OnlyFans.