With the arrival of Elon Musk to Twitter, the crypto community has seen the opportunity to make a “Twittercoin” with a global airdrop and build a series of services around it to make it revalue.
Elon Musk and Twitter on Decentralization. In this way, Elon could fulfill his obligation to repay the bank the $22 billion he plans to request to meet the social network purchase. Don’t forget that Elon is the creator of companies such as PayPal, OpenAI, Tesla, and SpaceX. All companies have revolutionized the way people make things in their respective areas.
Since news broke of Elon’s intention to buy Twitter, many people raised their voices about the impact these actions would have on one of the world’s most iconic social networks. Good or bad, the debate has made it clear that Twitter must evolve. Even having to accept Musk’s saying for a long time: “Twitter is not what it used to be and is becoming a well of toxicity for everyone.”
Elon Musk, Twittercoin
The problem is realizing the vision drawn – and almost promised – by Elon Musk: a Twitter without bots and broad freedom of speech, something that Twitter has been curtailing by leaps and bounds. In addition, create protections to avoid toxicity and configure it as a place where each account can be identifiable to a single person without knowing how it will affect their privacy.
On the other hand, there is the problem of monetizing Twitter and making the 44 billion Musk has spent on the social network pay off. All of this begs one question: can blockchain help build that vision? The answer is an absolute YES. The technical possibility exists, but it’s not as easy as it seems, especially for those used to Twitter’s format within its 15-year history.
Decentralization: a solution for Twitter in the Musk era
Many community members joined in a familiar chorus with the buyout: decentralize Twitter. The idea of a Twitter with so much power as to have our data, sell it and do whatever with it, without us knowing absolutely nothing about such a process, is not something that all users accept. Our data is on a server, and any employee can see it, manipulate it at will, and make us look like fools. Mismanagement has already happened: remember when verified profiles of Elon Musk, Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and many other important people said they would double the amount of ETH/BTC you would send to their address? The scam was possible because a Twitter worker opened the door to the social network’s monitoring system to the scammers.
If Twitter were a universe of Smarts Contracts on a blockchain instead of a centralized company, the hack of 2021 would not have been possible. Decentralization is precisely what Web3 lovers are asking Musk to do. The task is enormous but possible because blockchain has mechanisms to help.
Twitter on the blockchain
Twitter could become a dApp running on a decentralized blockchain. Thanks to Smarts Contracts, all Twitter functions would be possible, and their use would only be possible through interactions with them. This conversion would transform Twitter into the largest Web3 app. Its success would be the biggest revolution in the blockchain and Web3 world.
Achieving this goal is complex because we are talking about one of 800 million people, although many of those accounts are bots. However, the number of users would be extremely high, requiring highly scalable blockchain networks. So our options are few. Networks like Polygon would be unable to cope with such a request. Solana is a world still in the alpha phase, Cosmos falls short, and Algorand should evolve more. Even Flow might not be enough.
Bitcoin, to the rescue
Blockchain must evolve to cope with such a need for resources. The answer may lie in a small project that has been under development in Bitcoin for some time. It is the SMR (State Machine Replication) application on Bitcoin and its L2, Lightning Network.
Lightning Network makes trading so inexpensive that we would discuss a gift. Plus, the network can improve and scale in speed. You can even build your network accessible only to Twitter, paving the way for the network to have its resources. But the magic happens with using SMR because it would allow the creation of clients with advanced Smart Contract capabilities. It would be about creating native dApps with languages as powerful as C/C++ or Rust, which communicate via an LN protocol, leaving an indelible trace of their participation in Bitcoin or any other chosen network. SMR’s ability to create replicated states in a decentralized network provides scalability without giving up blockchain networks’ fault tolerance and security.
Developers consider SMR as “the Git of blockchain.” It is seen as such because it eases updating of network states by receiving a hash added to the rest of the network computers. It gets verified, and thus it is known whether the information given is valid—no heavy transactions and blocks. No large volumes of data are moving around the Internet. It is state-of-art in efficiency, scalability, and security.
SMR is not a dream. It has been in the works since 1983. The first known system with such capabilities is BFT-Smart, created in 2014. In Bitcoin, RGB Protocol is a development dating back to 2019 that could make decentralized Twitter a reality. A Twitter where managing crypto integrates into its core and monetization does not fall on selling data but on sustaining the network and providing associated services. A platform where all information is decentralized, thanks to protocols such as Filecoin or IPFS. Protocols where censorship is impossible. Governance is communal, and access is through sovereign identities.
Twitter monetization
The reality looks different. Elon Musk has asked for 22 billion from a bank to face the purchase of the social network, and the bank managers want to see their money back on the best possible terms. So Elon must think fast about making Twitter a money-making machine without betraying his followers. It seems that he intends to charge a usage fee to companies and government institutions. For ordinary users, it will always be free, he has said.
Binance invests in Twitter
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has participated in Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter acquisition deal. According to the filing on Wednesday with the SEC, Binance pledged $500 million to fund the acquisition. The capital places the exchange among one of the most significant contributors to the deal to buy the social networking company, though it is not the only one.
Other companies in the cryptocurrency industry also invested capital to back Musk. The filing indicates that Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Qatar Holding, and Fidelity were notable firms that committed funds to the Tesla CEO’s acquisition plans.
In total, 18 co-investors collectively committed nearly $7.1 billion. Binance was the fourth largest contributor, with $500 million, after Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust, which invested $1 billion.