Yung Beef on Subsocial's Decentralized Social Networks and Marketplaces (Episode 241)
Crypto Current Staff Infrastructure, Markets, Metaverse December 27, 2021
Yung Beef joins us to discuss Subsocial's Decentralized Social Networks and Marketplaces.
First entering crypto in late 2017, Yung Beef is now the Content Lead & Community Manager for Subsocial, the only social networking platform in the Dotsama ecosystem. He places the community first and enjoys researching new projects.
subsocial. network/links
Richard Carthon: will everyone welcome to another episode of Crypto Current Your host here, Richard Carthon, and today I have a special guest all the way out in Houston working on a project that I'm interested to learn more about. We have a young beef would sub social. How are you doing today?
Yung Beef: Doing pretty good. Thank you for having me on.
Richard Carthon: Of course, men will excited to learn more about the social, but before we do, I want to learn more about you. Can you give us some background on yourself?
Yung Beef: So first, get in a group to read about the beginning of twenty eighteen after that big moron was involved of some interesting projects on Etherium.
Yung Beef: And then I was in for a couple of months, probably through August or so. And then the bear market happened and I got back out. So still in college at the time, and this guy wasn't involved at all until the beginning of this year. Mom got back in mainly because I was working at a mortgage bank and didn't have anything else to do with the time or I was bored, so I started to crypto stuff.
Yung Beef: Mainly gotten to the same ecosystem because of the tech's fantastic and the Cirium gas fees are ridiculous. So sort of a push and pull factor there. Yeah. And then started looking for crypto jobs in the summer, and one of my friends sent me a link to the tweet from some social accounts that they were looking for technical documentation writer, which do not qualify for at all.
Yung Beef: But I applied anyways and started talking with Alex, who's our founder. And one thing led to another, and then I ended up with a different role. So now I'm the content leading community manager. So I wrote all of our announcements to the community and our ambassador program community calls, and I'm starting to sort of pivot to more of a business development role. So I'm talking with other projects about doing integrations. Once we get launched as a pair of chain.
Richard Carthon: Awesome and so interesting journey, right, so going from banking into the crypto space and going through some of the struggles that I even myself are going through right now within the Ethereum ecosystem of just gas fees being ridiculous and looking into different ecosystems, like I said with Kusama, it captured your attention and you found some social where you applied for a job that you want to say qualified for, but at least got your foot in the door. And eventually you landed in more of a niche place that kind of fits more of your skill set.
Richard Carthon: Can you speak to that for a second? Like the person who's looking at potentially getting into the crypto space but doesn't necessarily find a job that's specifically what they're looking to do, but has the courage to at least get started so they can eventually land there?
Yung Beef: Yeah, we my number one piece of advice would be do work before applying for the job or before getting the job. At least that will help massively. And I did that with this. Over the summer, I started a blog. I think I only put out like five posts, you know, but I want about Polkadot next summer. And what about Etherium? And I started talking with Alex about this job, and then I quickly went and read the whole sort of social paper and put out a blog post on that.
Yung Beef: This could explain the whole thing, so you get a feel for my writing style and the quality and so on that I could, you know, I knew what the project was about. And so I think doing that ahead of time was probably what ended up getting me the job I have now. And, you know, we're hiring a lot of people or trying to at least, and one of the things you definitely look for is like.
Yung Beef: I guess, like dedication, and if you're doing work beforehand without any compensation that shows dedication stuff, so I'm definitely doing work ahead of time. I will always be beneficial.
Richard Carthon: Definitely. People like saying that you have the inner drive to go and put some stuff out there, but you just said that there's a couple of opportunities out there, but something that you do, I think, is very crucial that a lot of people kind of overlook. And that's the technical writing piece of it or even reading technical documents, white papers, et cetera. How crucial do you think it is that for people who are looking to get into certain projects, understand at a base level what they're getting into by reading white papers?
Richard Carthon: Well, so I'll clarify, just make sure you understand I'm not doing technical writing
Richard Carthon: when they put that tweet out, they needed someone that like knows how to code and rewrite, write the documents for developers and stuff. And I don't know how to code, so I'm not doing that. I'm writing like our announcements and stuff like that on our blog. But I do think white papers are pretty important, especially if you're going to apply to a job. You should have read the white paper already and know the ins and outs of it as much as you can.
Richard Carthon: Got it. OK, well, thanks for clarifying that, but kind of shifting into Sub Social, so tell us what it is and what ultimately is Sub Social trying to accomplish.
Yung Beef: Yeah. So a lot of people, I think some social justice social network on the blockchain. It's not really the, we call it, a social networking platform. So for people familiar with Polkadot and Kusama, an analogy that I use often is you can think of some social as a religion or social networks. So it's like the base underlying layer and then you build all these social networks on top of it. So we we have a web app, so you have the blockchain and then you build the apps on top of it.
Yung Beef: So we built the blockchain and then we also have built a web after runs on top of it. It's also called Sub Social, which we need to change the name because people get confused. So our web app could technically be seen as a competitor to Facebook or Twitter or whatever. But these are social blockchain protocol is not a competitor to Facebook and Twitter. You know, it's apples to oranges and sort of like comparing okra or Kusama to Syria or Iraq or Somalia zero three times there once was not the same.
Yung Beef: So we have this base layer for building social networks on where you could build these web apps or mobile apps on top of it as different social networks.
Yung Beef: Now, one of the cool features is, for example, Twitter and Facebook. Their user bases are separated, so he built up a big following on Twitter and then you decided to move to Facebook or Instagram or whatever. You have to basically rebuild your follower base and you might have some followers and have accounts on both, and you can get them to follow you on the new platform pretty easily. But you can't just move the whole thing versus social your social graph, basically.
Richard Carthon: We got this on the blockchain, and all the different social networks are built on top of the blockchain. So when you move between them, your social graph is still on the blockchain, so you can just take it with you basically. So the social network's basically the front ends, you know, the websites or the mobile apps, they're basically just it's up to the user preference, whichever one that you would use, depending on the user experience and the user interface of that particular social network.
Richard Carthon: So, you know, if you're using one and a new one comes out that you like better, you can just start using that and you'll still have your follower base or your content, your whole network, everything's already going to be there.
Richard Carthon: Wow. OK, so like you said, you're building the underlying technology, so then these platforms can be built on top of and kind of be interoperable across chains. And I believe one of the challenges with doing this is is being able to have a pair of chains created and I believe you potentially have one on the horizon. Can you speak to that for a second?
Richard Carthon: Yeah. So we just won the sixteenth auction, I believe, last Saturday. So we'll be going live as a period train on January 8th, one month from today. We're not sure how long it will take after that to get everything like actually launched, get the crowd loan rewards distributed and everything. But it shouldn't be that long because we've already had our bid in that running through over a year now. One thing to note most projects they just launch a pair of jeans, but we've had our are made in that running.
Richard Carthon: It's been a standalone substrate chain and we're going to be keeping that. We'll be relaunching that as a main, that chains will have a full suite of validators. And right now, the internet is just proof of authority.
Richard Carthon: But then we'll also be launching our pair of jeans, so we'll have to chains. We're going to build a bridge, then we'll share the same token
Richard Carthon: because right now, the pure chain block times are higher and there's not as much time in each block who are doing extrinsic to the solo chains or something like ten times more performance at the moment. So if you want a faster transaction speed than you would use the soul chain, but the people to do all know the cool integrations to the other period chains and period is working on getting the block times lower for the pair of jeans.
Richard Carthon: So eventually there shouldn't be a performance discrepancy. You, I think at that point, pretty much everyone will just migrate. You know, that's that's big, man.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, again, that's a that's big news. I know those are a pretty big essential step. So for everyone listening, it's to be able to adequately connect to all these different blockchains you get these pair train set up. It's a long, pretty strenuous process. And then once you kind of get the blessing of the ecosystem, you can then really get to work on building out your platform. So it sounds like in early January, this is where some social is going to be, so they can start building a lot of all the different things that they've been beta testing and having the testnet ready to go before they launch their main net, which is the main application and having everything ready to go.
Richard Carthon: So with that, what have been some of the use cases that you've seen your users use within the beta testnet?
Richard Carthon: So the web after we have a sort of a hybrid between Reddit and Medium. And you could build all sorts of different versions of that. But you know, with this one, it's it's mainly like text based. So a lot of people do like blog type stuff. You know, some other projects in the ecosystem have already digital medium, and they're exposed to another update forms of social.
Richard Carthon: We've also recently started doing Reddit style emails with notable people in the ecosystem, so we'll make a post about it. And then, you know, people can ask the questions in the comments and then that person will just come through the later time and answer the questions in their.
Richard Carthon: Some NFT artists are sort of doing a blog slash marketing thing on their.
Richard Carthon: Got it. OK, so quite a few different use cases, and for the various people who are coming on and starting to move away from medium and read it and et cetera. And they're building it on top of so some social is the main draw here that because it's pretty much being put on a decentralized platform. You know, part of, you know, making sure that there there's no censorship taken away from the content they make or they're able to customize more. No algorithm dictatorship you kind of speak to, you know, you can have five different pillars, some sort of social.
Richard Carthon: Can you kind of speak to those?
Yung Beef: Yeah. So, you know, we got a couple of features like censorship resistance. You touched on customizability, but I think the most attractive one will be the monetization aspects. So, for example, you know, if you're a content creator on YouTube, I think YouTube takes like 45 percent of the ad revenue, which is absurd in my opinion. And all the other platforms, you know, so they were like five to twenty five percent or something like that. So the first one they were going to be adding is tipping.
Yung Beef: But we also want to add subscriptions and pay per view and stuff like that. So, you know, commoditization, but it's right on the blockchain. There's no middleman so creators can capture the full value of the work is not going to be anyone taking a split. I think we'll also have ad space. You'll be able to sell directly to advertisers, so you'll get the full ad revenue there as well. So, you know, YouTube taking 45 percent.
Richard Carthon: Yeah. No, it's the monetization piece has always been a challenge, right? So you do all this hard work to build an audience.
Richard Carthon: And shared and then fortunately, you're getting a significant portion taken away before you get your piece of the pie. So sounds like you're actively looking to address those needs, which is important. And then I guess the other part of as people are building on top of sub social. What are the kind of if you kind of bring up like a road map of life where you think this is headed as we head into 2020 to what are some of the core functionalities that you think people should be excited about?
Hey, cryptocurrency, Drew. This is Steve Miller, and I'm the host of CSI Live show that keeps you up to date with what's poppin off in crypto in every episode of CSI Live brings you. The latest news keeps you updated on the top projects in decrypts. Everything you need to know to get ahead in the wild world of Web three. So if you really want to stay cryptocurrency, join Richard, Chris and I every Tuesday and Friday at seven p.m. Eastern, only on YouTube Live. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to cryptocurrency YouTube channel today! And as always, stay cryptocurrency.
Richard Carthon: We've got a long list of features that we want to add. Main problem at the moment is a developer shortage, but we want to add more monetization features like I mentioned earlier, and we also have some ideas for some down features. And we have what's called spaces sort of is versatile. You can think of it like a Facebook group or Twitter page or blog on Medium YouTube channel, whatever so
Richard Carthon: you can have one owner of a space or we're planning to add social tokens. So then you'll be able to launch a token for a space, and then you can basically turn that into a governance token and then distribute it and have a community governance space, sort of like a community governance subreddit or Facebook group, something like that. So we think those will be pretty interesting. And we're also planning to organize some hackathons next year to give some more outside developers building on the ecosystem.
Richard Carthon: So get some more of those different front apps built, and we have a couple of ideas for that. And we're also we're working on another app ourselves right now that will be sort of Instagram like NFT related app sort of pressure to really be a marketplace or somewhere like a gallery. I mean, that's still in development. So we're not trying to show what this can end up looking like you.
Richard Carthon: Got it. Well, sounds like I have a lot on the road map, a lot of things festering over at substantial, so everyone, make sure you.
Richard Carthon: It's to take away and get a 10000 foot view of the entire crypto landscape. You know, we are kind of shit as we wrap up twenty twenty one right in the twenty twenty two. What do you think is in store or what are some of the things that you're looking out for into the future of cryptocurrency? So right now there, obviously, there's a lot of tension that is in metaverse and it's DeFi is still relevant. And it looks like now there's going to be movement towards an age of building out social platforms on blockchain.
Richard Carthon: What are what do you think people need to be paying more attention to as we look into 2020 too?
Richard Carthon: Yeah I, think it's definitely be a big play. One thing I'm very bullish on the most entities are basically just JPEGs or something boring like that. But there's the remark team. They're building on Kusama. They basically made NFT 2.0. So you have enough to use that can equip other enough teams and own other entities. So it's going to be tons of functionality there for, you know, Game five stuff like that. And I think another thing to look out for is a decentralized identity plays so shield comes to mind.
Richard Carthon: They're just launched as a pair channel, Kusama and partnered with like some European governments and stuff, so they're already doing stuff their white papers like one hundred and nine pages long. And I read the whole thing over the summer.
Richard Carthon: Impressive, very bullish on that.
Richard Carthon: We recently had them on the show, so shots are killed, for sure.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think that'll be big. And then you sort of stuff it as like real world use cases, energy web comes to mind. I know they're already being used in like Australia and California, and I think they just partnered with BMW. So yeah, I mean, they're defined as cool and always game for stuff, you know, it's fun.
Richard Carthon: DeFi is important for people that can't get access to banks and stuff, but a lot of this other stuff that like already has basically instant real world use cases. I think that's the stuff that's going to be really transformative for society over the next decade or so.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I agree. I mean, you brought up a lot of really good points, and the one I want to echo just real quick is online identity. We live in a virtual world. More and more these days, especially with COVID, you know, Zoom became a lot of people's medium to be able to continue to conduct business. And we also are very interconnected in the crypto blockchain space. And so we're constantly on camera or in virtual worlds, et cetera. So virtual identity is going to become more and more crucial. And I think that's definitely something people should pay more attention to and become more knowledgeable on.
Richard Carthon: So definitely thanks for bringing that to everyone's attention. One more quick question I have for you. Usually, when I bring on community managers, I always like to ask for a couple of tips because everyone that a lot of people listen to the show are either in the space or thinking about joining communities or are and or some entrepreneurs, and they're always trying to figure out how do you continue to build out your community? Do you have a couple pieces of advice or tips that they can use to continue to build out their own community?
Richard Carthon: You know, when I was thinking about just yesterday might be a little weird is don't ban anyone unless you absolutely have to. It's never a good look to be banning people, and it can definitely be a test of patience at times.
Richard Carthon: But I think it's going to do. You just have to get over it, you know, if someone's just annoying, you have to deal with that, basically. It would definitely be a test patients if you're going to be a community manager. But I do think it's a good entry into the space. If you're not like where you don't have 10 years of experience being a business developer or something like that, that's sort of the route that I took.
Richard Carthon: Gotcha. Well, thanks for that sort of wrap up, man, we always finish with two fun questions. The first one being with all the information that you now have of being a few years into crypto blockchain space, if you can impart one or two pieces of wisdom to yourself back when you first got in. What would you tell yourself?
Richard Carthon: Only invest for fundamentals, because then you don't really care about the bear markets and also don't overleverage. Make sure you always have enough money and income to pay your bills so that you don't have to sell when the dips. If you do those two things and basically just HODL and you'll make it,
Richard Carthon: yeah, the good. That's a really, really, really good nuggets. Everyone go back. Listen to that played a few times. It's those are two solid, solid lessons. So thank you for sharing that as we wrap up here, Young B, what is the final thought that you want to leave with the community today?
Richard Carthon: What comes to mind is thinking about the Metaverse and Zuckerberg. They rebranded the matter and they're coming up with their own quote unquote metaverse. But in my opinion, the metaverse is, by definition, open and permissionless. And while Metta might build a metaverse like that, I don't really expect him to do it. So it's sort of we're at a fork in the road where we're either going to become digital serfs on Zuckerberg's land or we'll have an actual metaverse.
Richard Carthon: So I know what I'll be betting on. Yeah.
Richard Carthon: OK. It's interesting, I I think, uh, you know, at the end of the day, there are corporate institution that have stockholders and they have quarterly numbers to hit. So they're going to create a world that keeps them within their world. Right the way it would be and beneficial for them to be interoperable. But we'll see. Right. Time will tell, but I kind of tend to agree with you on this one.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I mean, basically, it comes down to incentives and there's are not aligned with everyone else basically, right?
Richard Carthon: So some keep in mind for everyone listening. But again, and we thank you for coming on here and spend some time and sharing all of the knowledge and information. What are ways that people can either connect with you and learn more about Sub Social
Richard Carthon: Futu to sub social network slash links? We have a link through their links to our website, Twitter, Discord blog. All that stuff.
Richard Carthon: Perfect. Well, again, thank you so much for being on the show and for everyone listening. Stay cryptocurrency. Hey, cryptocurrency crew, we want to give a quick shout out to all of our faithful listeners out there. It's been an amazing journey and we really appreciate your support throughout the years as we've been growing as a community. Each episode, we decided that we would start sharing some of the reviews that you were leaving for us for today. We would like to share this review. Today's review comes from BG 93 compelling content delivered in a digestible format. Demystifies the crypto world by engaging participants from all corners in intelligent conversation.
Richard Carthon: Remarkably interesting. We sincerely appreciate this review and all reviews and would like to ask that if you're enjoying our show, please take a quick moment to go and leave a review on our podcast so that hopefully we can be highlighting your review next. Simply go to our show notes or go to our website where we have a link, where you can share your review today. Hey, everyone, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. For more information on today's episode and all of our episodes, please visit us at WW w that crypto dash current, not CEO. You can also find a link in the show notes.
Richard Carthon: Want to stay up to date on the latest news in cryptocurrency? Sign up for our newsletter today. You'll receive daily emails Monday through Friday that are personalized and curated content specific to you and your interest. Powered by artificial intelligence, you can either go to our show notes or go to our website to sign up today. Are you an accredited investor looking to invest in cryptocurrency? Quezon City Capital can help go to Quezon City Capital dot com for more information. I don't know if you've noticed, but the quality of our podcast each week are improving. I can only thank my amazing producer Andrew Darida with the Ritter Productions, who has been putting all of this together.
Richard Carthon: Thanks for tuning into another episode of cryptocurrency with Richard Corrigan's. We'll be back with more exciting developments from
Richard Carthon: the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency
Richard Carthon: next. But until then, stay crypto current.
Richard Carthon: He was now.
Richard Carthon: Thank you for joining us for another episode of cryptocurrency. Just one quick reminder cryptocurrency is a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform that's bridging the gap between the curious newcomers who were just discovering the space and the thought leaders who are shaping its future. All opinions expressed by Richard Carr thon the cryptocurrency team and their guests on this show are exclusively their own opinions. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Richard. The team and their guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or to follow his financial advice. This show and any other crypto production is exclusively for informational purposes.
‹ Dave Burrells on Pluto Digital's Yield Optimization Platform (Episode 240) › 5 Crypto Slang Terms You Need To Know (Part 4)