Please describe your proposed solution.
AdaGram will solve the problems of traditional social media platforms by introducing a Cardano Powered Social Media platform to all users within the Cardano Blockchain. AdaGram will take a different approach to censorship, allowing all users to express their thought processes and have a decentralized governance system when censoring any piece of data. We tend to find many 'influencers' with bot accounts that deceive the general public. Creating an AdaGram profile will be very straightforward but involve actions the user will need to complete to prevent bot existence on the platform.
AdaGram will use Cardano's PoS protocol, whereby AdaGram users and Cardano holders will be able to delegate their ADA to earn the ADG native token to use on our platform actively. With the excellent functionalities of Proof of Stake, variables such as security protocols, decentralization, and power and cost-efficiency are essential factors taken within our platform. AdaGram considers the Cardano solution being developed by IOG (previously IOHK) to be the most suitable for implementing our platform, despite the fact that there are several blockchains with varying features and strengths.
While many others claim to be developing a third-generation blockchain, the Cardano project teams are initially concentrating on three main features they believe are crucial for widespread adoption of the technology:
- Scalability: The capacity to handle hundreds of thousands to millions of users is a prerequisite for a technology to achieve widespread acceptance. This is especially true for AdaGram, as our technology intends to eventually enable a globally distributed social networking service that many users adopt.
- Sustainability - This refers to putting a process in place to ensure the technology is maintained beyond the completion of the first project. Despite the fact that Cardano already benefits from being an open-source project, crucial infrastructure such as this must continue to evolve, which is typically a slow process if unfunded. Having a Treasury system built into Cardano so that continued development may be supported through community-agreed projects is a crucial criterion for AdaGram's trust in Cardano's long-term viability as an underlying blockchain infrastructure.
- Interoperability – This is not only being considered to allow Cardano to exchange value with other public blockchains that operate as cryptocurrencies (an important goal for the blockchain industry as a whole). But, this is also supporting interoperability with permissioned blockchains that have specific use cases (e.g., industry supply chain tracking or a nation's government identity system) so that users of those permissioned blockchains can interact with external systems and markets globally… An example of how AdaGram may benefit from this capability is by integrating with projects working to implement ownership of the work content creators have published, such as NFTs.
As adverts and data on social media sites grant these big corporations millions of dollars in revenue, users do not recognize the share in profit. AdaGram will take a different approach to this consensus, one that allows benefits the users and future development of the project. The revenue generated via adverts will be split into two buckets, one directly invested into the community the other into the AdaGram foundation treasury. By directly investing into the community, we provide users to have a fair share of the income earned on the AdaGram platform. The funds deposited into the treasury will be distributed through a community governance model and used to encourage further development on the platform, provide aid to social causes, and whatever else the community users decide upon. We believe this will reward the AdaGram community monetarily and as well as improve usability within the service provided.
Additionally, due to the decentralized network AdaGram is run on, information can be shared in parts of the world where oppressive governments censor information coming into the country and run propaganda campaigns to manipulate its citizenry. Traditionally, governments block webpages from entering the country through a centralized power source because the content is coming from a single node. However, when the sites are run on a decentralized system with hundreds or even thousands of nodes transmitting the content, governments are unable to stop information from coming in. This gives citizens in an oppressive government access to information they otherwise would not have, as well as share information with the world about the oppressive actions the government is taking. AdaGram seeks to better the lives of these oppressed people by building a platform for them to access and share content.
The AdaGram platform will allow not only typical social features like creating profiles and posts but also new blockchain-native features like in-app tokens, tipping, and NFTs. These features enable entirely new types of money-enabled products, including social NFT experiences and tokenized influencer profiles. In turn, these solutions would allow creators to earn greater royalties on AdaGram than on conventional social networks while keeping a more direct interaction with their followers. The AdaGram business strategy centers around transactions flowing across a decentralized network of possibly hundreds of third-party apps on the Cardano ecosystem, so producers are not trapped in a single app. We believe that this more decentralized economic model can replace the traditional ads-driven business model for social media, which requires users to be concentrated in a few highly centralized apps in order to maximize profit.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Building a social media DApp on Cardano will be crucial for bringing about real-world adoption and users to the ecosystem. Our goal is a create a self-sustaining DApp, where after the initial development, users and creators take part in co-creation for further development.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
We see two primary risks for the platform. One technological, blockchain-based problem and one more social, philosophical problem.
The blockchain-based problem is transaction fees being too high and reducing the desire of users to participate in the platform. We have various ways we can address this. One reason we believe Cardano is the best chain for our development is the development of babel fees. Once this becomes available, we will test and review the feasibility of babel fees to keep transaction cost low.
The other solution for high transaction fees is to give users the options to have their transaction done on-chain or off-chain. A similar method is used in another decentralized social media platform, Minds. Transaction costs can be kept low if done off-chain. We can incentive users to keep transactions on-chain by providing greater rewards for on-chain transactions (think posts, comments, etc), but by not requiring everything on-chain, we can keep transaction cost low for our users.
None of the solutions will be hasty, as we plan to run a test-net version of the DApp and learn from our users before it has a full release to ensure a top-quality product for our users.
The social, philosophical problem of ADAGram is centered around the balance around free-speech, censorship, and moderation. We strongly believe in the power of free speech. Individuals should be given the opportunity and power to speak what they believe. Nearly everyone, at least in the West, believes in this idea. However, often times there are bad actors and hateful people. They use their speech to poison and destroy, not to correct and build. Many platforms that had the idealistic goal of bringing about true free speech soon became a safe haven for hateful, extremist groups. Moderation was near nonexistent and most rationale, thoughtful, kind people left the platform. We do not want ADAGram to fall victim to the same fate.
Conversely, more mainstream platforms seek to moderate this behavior and censor objectionable content. Again, this may be down with pure intentions. However, when the decision on what to moderate is left in the hands of few, with little insight into how decisions are made, we may see over-censorship and the unjust silencing of voices. Whether or not an individual agrees with these policies by large platforms based on their own political temperament, nearly everyone has heard the complaints of certain groups. Due to the perceived over-reaching, we have seen an increase in alternative social media platforms.
ADAGram seeks to find a balance between the two. We have included Professors of Philosophy who focus heavily on free speech on our team. We will outsource the problem of censorship to our community. We believe by making free-speech a central value to our platform, we will attract individuals who care about free speech. Instead of having a small group of individuals review "reported" behavior, we will allow all users to see the content in question. While we still need to test a threshold for censoring or banning objectionable material, we will require a super majority vote to enact a ban. We do this because a simple 51%-49% vote is not a true indicator of a truly offensive or hateful piece of content. However, if 99% of people see a post as wrong and offensive, there's a higher chance the content is in fact wrong and offensive.
The balance between free speech and moderation is a difficult one to navigate, which is why will again test the policy in our beta mode before we launch the platform for the entire public.