Only1 Overview — Patreon on Solana
What is Only1?
Only1 positions itself as “The first social NFT platform ”, and will be launching on the 30th September, 2021. Only1, which could be described as “Patreon on Solana”, offers some very exciting functionalities for creators, bringing the promise of web 3.0 and a crypto-powered creator economy closer to reality.
Influencers and creators will be able to leverage Only1’s platform as a tool to complement their existing presence across various web2 platforms, all the while having a foot in the crypto ecosystem.
Built on Solana, the speed and low transaction cost of the Solana network promises scalability for the Only1 Platform and therefore some real exciting growth opportunities.
How does it work?
The core features of Only1 all aim to associate content-generation with returns for the creator and their fans. The core features on Only1 are: Staking pools, Genesis-NFTs, and Content-NFTs.
Staking pools: Staking pools on Only1 are content-creator specific, i.e. each content-creator has their own staking pool, and the APR of the staking pool is tied to the content-generation of the creator. The staking pool rewards the creator and the staker with $LIKE Tokens. The more productive a creator is, the more $LIKE tokens are rewarded to the staking pool.
Genesis-NFTs: Each onboarded creator is also given one Genesis-NFT. The creator may associate it with certain access perks. Holder of the Genesis-NFT will also be entitled to returns of that creator’s staking pool. Individuals will bid for ownership of the Genesis-NFT with $LIKE. The $LIKE tokens are then burned.
Content-NFT: Creators can post exclusive content in the form of NFT to be sold on the only1 marketplace. The buyer of the NFT will own the NFT, and will be able to see its content. But for the rest who don’t prefer to pay the expensive price for the ownership of the NFT, they can pay the unlocking fee (which can be low like 1 $LIKE, depending on the creator) to view the content. The unlocking fee will then be split between the creator and the content-NFT owner.
Competitor landscape
Major competitors to Only1 include BitClout, yuser, Roll, and rally. What makes Only1 stand out is that it does not employ a social currency model to achieve empowerment value-add for content creators.
What is a social currency? A social currency is a token minted by individual creators. Once minted, creators can raise money with token sales and encourage loyalty among their fans. The fans themselves can use the tokens to buy goods or services or even vote to influence the behaviour of their creator.
For example, this is Roll’s elaboration on the matter:
“Roll is infrastructure for social money. It allows issuers to own, control and monetize the value of their social interactions across all platforms. Roll accomplishes this by creating a unique blockchain-based currency for each issuer as ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Each ERC20 token created on Roll is owned and managed by the issuer and acts as branded social money across the gamut of social interactions. We call these unique, independent currencies ‘fancoins’.”
Only1 does not use the social currency model. Content creators do not issue their own tokens. Content creators obtain return for their content, build fanbases, by using their staking pools. The only currency on Only1 is $LIKE.
While the social currency model is perfectly fine for more established stars, the model may not work so well for new and up-and-coming content creators.
The main reason is that for new creators, the liquidity of their social currency is by definition going to be low. Nobody knows who you are (therefore nobody knows your token), and you don’t have a strong fan base (therefore not going to be a lot of people willing to buy your token, therefore liquidity is going to be low). Most importantly, people usually don’t want to just pay for one performer. They want to see multiple performers. Only when the performer is someone they really really like, then would they purchase the fancoin of that someone. Social currencies turn every single creator like a little country. While very successful and very attractive creators will not suffer from problems of liquidity, beginning creators or hobbyist creators will not be able to leverage much from social currencies.
This is not to say that social currencies don’t work. The point is that Only1 is here to fill in a certain demand niche for content-financialisation that social currencies probably cannot easily satisfy.
Putting this into the perspective of the crypto space, which is populated by ordinary folk like you and me, the personal staking pool model offered by Only1 is plausibly more attractive than the social currency model. Once the content-uploading and sharing functions mature, Only1 could plausibly compete with major established On the other hand, the KYC necessary to onboard Only1 might turn away some folk, who might be in crypto in the first place because of philosophical objections to the invasion of privacy and the expansion of government power.
Tokenomics
The $LIKE token has multiple utilities on the Only1 platform. It is used for NFT bidding on the Only1 marketplace and it serves as the reward in stakingpools. Fans can also tip $LIKE to their favourite creators. And from their pitchdeck and their frontpage, it also appears to be plans for $LIKE to serve governance functions — though governance functions are not yet enabled.
The $LIKE token has no maximum supply. $LIKE tokens are minted only when creators generate content, and are burned when Only1 users bid for NFTs. So essentially the price action of the $LIKE token is intimately tied to the activity on the Only1 platform. In particular, if Only1 manages to attract highly successful creators with extremely sought-after NFTs, $LIKE *can* become a deflationary token.
Distribution is also healthy, with no funny apparent funny business.
It should seem reasonable to conclude that the tokenomics of the $LIKE appears to be solid and the token is backed by strong utility on the platform.
Final Remarks
The Solana ecosystem is still very young. The NFT space on Solana is nowhere as mature or as mad as that on the ETH network. Only1, being one of the first NFT player on Solana, and one which actually aims to to imbue NFTs with utility, would make it a plausible big player in the near future. Furthermore, consider Solana’s speed and low transaction costs, there is a real promise of scalability and ecosystem growth. Finally, given the increasingly restrictive and draconian rule by algorithm developments on web2 platforms like youtube and facebook, resulting in formulaic content designed to maximise SEO and algorithm visibility, coupled by questionable financial rewards, discontent from users and creators is arguably strong enough to prompt an exodus to web3 social media platforms.
Only1 would be one of the first ones to do it.
only1 medium: https://only1nft.medium.com/
only1 documentation: https://only1.gitbook.io/only1/
only1 twitter: https://twitter.com/only1nft
only1 discord: https://discord.com/invite/sUu7KZwNCB
only1 telegram: https://t.me/only1nft
