EOS Hot Sauce #44 – Mainnet Update, Voice Beta Release, WAX Excitement, BOS VM 2.0 and more!

Announced on June 1st, 2019 there was much speculation around Block.one’s new social media platform. And since the 14th of February was set as the launch of the public beta, the community was buzzing with excitement. 

Finally, Voice had its “Hello World” moment.

Shortly after Voice CEO Salah Zalatino published an open letter headlined “Why we are here,” the first beta testers were welcomed to the platform and screenshots were in high demand. 

It’s been a couple of days now since the launch of Voice Beta, and several beta testers have shared their experience. You’ll find an in-depth video analysis on the latest Everything EOS Episode where Zack Gall invited EOS Nation’s CEO, Yves La Rose.

Here’s a quick summary of findings and reactions so far:

User interface and user experience (UI/UX)

First, let’s dive into the onboarding process and some of the UI/UX features.

Users that previously signed up for the Beta received an invitation email, which in some cases could end up in the spam folder.

For the account creation, you’ll need to take a picture and verify your identity with either a passport or a driver’s license. Once verified, you’ll find a very clean and crisp interface and 3000 Voice tokens for you to claim as a reward.

You’ll find a feed of different categories such as travel, wellness, philosophy, and humour. And a filter lets you sort the content by most recent, most voiced, most commented, and most active. Users can like, comment, and voice posts. They can also follow their favourite content creators by clicking the “listen” button next to their name. 

Posts must contain a minimum of 160 characters and can include images, video, or hyperlinks. A character minimum is an interesting approach, as it hints already at the intention of the platform to be the place for valuable content, with time and effort invested.

For the text portion, Voice offers several formatting options, ensuring that everything looks slick and easy to read. 

Voice posts are timestamped on the blockchain through hashes. Users have the option to delete previous posts, however, this action would be visible on the public record.

If you want to take a look at Voice before testing it out, Peter Keay, aka Bittgenstein, shared a couple of screen recordings on Twitter, and a beta tester named Samantha documented her whole first Voice experience in a great Youtube video.

The overall feel of post creation is similar to Medium, but it’s combined with a better sharing experience through a multitude of options for interaction, driven by the Voice token.

The Voice token

The Voice Token is at the heart of the Voice platform, creating unique incentive structures to drive back the value of the platform to the users, instead of extracting it. 

First of all, each user earns 100 Voice tokens each day they login. And they can earn more by creating popular content. Yet another, and probably most unique, option to earn tokens is by “voicing” a post.

Voicing an article will showcase your profile in prominent banner at the top of the post. To voice an article, you’ll need to spend some of your Voice tokens and outbid the previous user that voiced the article. If another user outbids you, you’ll get all of your tokens back plus a 10% profit. 

The “Voicing” is final once no one outbids the top bidder for 24 hrs, which secures public exposure for the winning bidder, and earns the creator of the article 33% of the final bid. 

Win/Win!

The “Voice it” function brings a fun gamification aspect to Voice, allowing users to claim some of the content’s value. We can’t wait to see what kind of strategies users will come up with to maximize their earnings and popularity.

KYC –  verified users

As previously mentioned, you need to verify your identity before you can join Voice, produce content, and earn tokens. The reasons why were addressed on the Voice Blog Post, “Why KYC matters.”

For the verification process, Block.one partnered with the KYC Provider HooYu, who have ensured that provided information is only used to check the identity.

Copies of the ID documents will be automatically deleted once verified.

The value of the public conversation and opinions shared on Voice are backed by real people vouching for the integrity of the information with their name and real-life reputation. 

Voice is not a place for manipulation through bots and fake users, or the noise and deception of trolls. 

As CEO Salah Zalatimo put it: 

Voice is a platform for “people who are for the collective pursuit of truth.”

While not everyone in the community is a big fan of KYC, it’s nice to know upfront that users of Voice are giving up their anonymity and will act accordingly. Since most of our email accounts, mobile devices or applications are already verified through a phone number, which are in most cases connected to an ID, this doesn’t seem like such a far stretch.

This point of view was summarized in a great meme by Binaural Beats (@beats_io).

Soon content on Voice will be accessible to the public, and only those who want to actively participate in Voice are required to verify.

Ground Rules and Moderation

“We have never seen what moderation looks like when you remove fake accounts. We believe accountability will dramatically reduce the need for human intervention” – Salah Zalatimo responding to Colin Talks Crypto, who did a great review on Voice on his Youtube channel.

Yes, Voice came with a set of ground rules and there will be moderation. Society and culture defines itself through a framework of rules that state what is acceptable and what is not. 

Voice is taking a stance against hate speech, abuse, threats, and violence, and users can refer to a clear set of guidelines in the process of self-moderation.

As we’ve learned in a presentation Block.one shared a couple of weeks back, users that help to keep the platform clean will also be rewarded with tokens, so the goal is not top-down censorship, but more so a self-regulating consensus on civilized behaviour and respectful co-existence.

Values that real people across the globe already agree upon.

Conclusion

Voice doesn’t aim to replace all existing social media platforms, and those more comfortable “surfing the web” under a pseudonym already have plenty of places to chose from.

Voice fills a vacuum in a time lacking reliable representation of public opinion.

With innovative design elements, Voice creates incentives for users to cultivate an environment for quality discussion on a variety of topics.

Content producers can take a professional approach, as they can reap all the profits from the popularity of their work and build up a reputation attached to their proven identity.

Nowadays, most media outlets are owned by a few individuals and more and more information is hidden behind paywalls or walled gardens. Voice creates a counterbalance to the traditional publishing industry and creates a forum for independent journalism.