Paid to Tweet: Ever thought your most crazed Twitter posts deserved some more attention? Well, because likes and retweets simply don’t pay the bills, there’s a new GameFi project that wants to pay users cold hard digital cash for their unhinged Twitter antics.
Through its native token DRAMA, Solana-based NFT project Outcast Academy will pay people for stirring the pot on Twitter. According to the project’s official Twitter account, the Academy has already secured backing from the CEO of VaynerMedia, Gary Vee.
The project works by tagging a bot called ‘DramaReward’ that nominates the best shitposts, memes and drama on Twitter. Once a tweet is nominated, it’s voted upon by the project’s community calculator and winners are distributed DRAMA tokens. Additionally, nominators that curate the most entertaining posts will earn a 10% commission fee for playing their part.
Speaking to The Chainsaw, Outcast Academy project leader Ilan said the aim of the game was to incentivise and reward users for their contributions to Web3 culture.
“The social layer of Web3 is vibrant, hilarious, and dramatic. A single tweet has the power to tank a project’s floor price or send it to the moon. Memes have shaped culture long before NFTs existed — and seen little to no reward,” Ilan said.
When asked how they came up with the undeniably unique idea for Outcast Academy, Ilan said that the team worked hard to find something that rewarded pre-existing behaviour in the crypto space:
“Shitposting, memes, and asking the hard hitting questions in Twitter Spaces is [native behaviour] for crypto holders. These are amazing content creators who are going unrewarded,” Ilan added.
Ilan added that the project is centred on rewarding users for the hilarity of their tweets, not the size of their follower count:
“The awarding of DRAMA is not tied to clout & virality alone…whether you’re a big influencer or a first-time memoor, you have an equal chance to earn DRAMA. “
Paid to Tweet
Ilan said the rules of the game are as follows, “be funny, not an asshole. FUD is welcome, but creative memes will earn more.”
GameFi, the umbrella term for apps and projects that pay people cryptocurrency to play games, learn and even meditate has become increasingly popular in the Web3 space. In fact, GameFi was responsible for onboarding nearly 75% of all new crypto investors over the past year.
The rapid increase in popularity of GameFi projects can be explained in part by the incredible success of Play-to-Earn (P2E) sensation Axie Infinity and the Australian-based Move-to-Earn (M2E) superstar STEPN.
However, as noted by The Chainsaw, there’s an enormous problem with the economics of many GameFi projects, namely they all require a growing stream of new investor capital to continue paying user rewards. This has led many critics to declare apps like STEPN and Axie Infinity “Ponzi schemes”.
While many GameFi apps in the Web3 space can’t technically be classified as Ponzi schemes, their lack of playability and long-term revenue generation remains a concern. Game developers would do well to address this issue if they want to ensure the survival of their user base in the long run.
All things considered, Outcast Academy seems to have the entertainment aspect very much covered.
