The companies Moonstruck.io and Hudrx, the idea and need for the integration and decentralization of Twitter, one of the greatest social networks, as well as the importance of this innovative solution were the topics of our interview with Strahinja Vukoičić, CEO of Moonstruck.io.
Web Mind: What is Moonstruck.io? How did the idea for this startup come about? What is your goal?
Strahinja Vukoičić: Moonstruck.io is a Web 3.0 development agency. We are essentially an engineering company that is entirely focused on Web 3.0 and blockchain technologies. We develop these technologies for our clients and take on projects that are either entirely based on blockchain or have a blockchain component for a traditional information system, software, application, or anything similar.
Web Mind: Are you more focused on the local market, or both local and global?
Strahinja Vukoičić: More globally, because the Web 3.0 community is generally quite small and is still in its infancy everywhere. The technology itself is only five years old, and there are no major events or presentations of projects that have happened in that world. IT technology and the current internet are still based on Web 2.0 technologies. These are dynamic applications and everything we currently see on the internet where users interact through the front-end, they are cloud-based applications, and everything we have on the internet.
This mass is slowly shifting towards Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is supposed to be the next level.
Web Mind: How was the idea of integrating Twitter and Web 3.0 born? What motivated you to take such a step?
Strahinja Vukoičić: The idea came from our partner on that project, the Hundrx company. Hundrx is a startup whose mission is to introduce decentralization to Twitter, as well as everything that decentralization can bring. Their main idea is to take the application of Web 3.0 and blockchain technologies to a new level.
We joined as partners and now we are developing that technology together.
Web Mind: Why is it necessary to decentralize Twitter?
Strahinja Vukoičić: This is one of the first pioneering attempts. Twitter as a social network is too massive to completely transfer to Web 3.0 on its own. What Moonstruck and Hundrx are doing together is introducing a part of what Web 3.0 is to Twitter in the form of an extension.
Hundrx functions in the following way. It is essentially a browser extension, and when you install it, you get an additional field on your basic Twitter view. It looks native as if it were an original Twitter product.
What we are doing is an extension for Twitter that allows you to “produce” or mint social tokens from certain influential profiles. Twitter users, who are mostly either followers or content creators, have a new opportunity to, in a way, measure and monetize their influence, or the influence of the content they produce. This is what Hundrx is doing in essence.
Strahinja Vukoičić, CEO of Moonstruck.io
The concept itself has already been seen on Reddit in the form of karma points that show your contribution to the community. The social tokens produced by Hundrx are a measure of your influence on Twitter.
What we currently want to enable is for users who follow certain profiles, creators, influencers to “upvote” as on Reddit, but they do it on the blockchain by minting social tokens of certain profiles.
Web Mind: Does this reflect the essence of that integration or is there something more?
Strahinja Vukoičić: This is just a beginning, it’s what we primarily want to do, to introduce Twitter to Web 3.0 through an alternative implementation of tokenization and enable influencers to monetize their activity on Twitter in an additional way. Until now, influencers have mostly done this via endorsements, contracts, or compensation for writing something.
Here the creators are somewhat passive. For example, as Elon Musk’s follower, I can mint social tokens of his profile, and he receives a certain percentage of that. As users send or sell those tokens to each other, they receive a certain percentage of each transaction as an incentive in money.
The more popular the user’s profile is, the more popular their tokens are, the more they are produced, the more their value increases.
For influencers and celebrities, this is another way to engage with their followers. They also receive a concrete, exact model with which they can measure their social capital and monetize it.
This is essentially a win-win situation, where both profile owners and followers benefit. Currently, followers have no benefits from following certain influencers or celebrities except being able to see the content they create. They already have some social capital and benefit from that capital.
What we want to do is to bring this down to people who follow celebrities, so that they also have some kind of tangible benefit, not just the feeling of being a part of it, but something that gives them the opportunity to interact with them.
Web Mind: Is this in a way similar to traditional governance tokens on certain blockchains, or are they two completely opposite things?
Strahinja Vukoičić: They are not opposite, as for the time being, social tokens serve as a measure of influence. But in later stages, one of the ideas is that owners of these social tokens, which are a measure of certain social capital, will benefit from it, not just content creators but also their followers.
Followers have the opportunity to earn money by, for example, being the first to mint Elon Musk’s profile. As the supply of his tokens increases, so does their price.
We do this by using a bonding curve. A bonding curve is something that regulates the price in relation to the cap of the tokens themselves. The more there are, the price continuously rises. Those who are first have the opportunity to later earn something by being the first.
Web Mind: Will Web 3.0 Twitter be better than classic Web 2.0 Twitter in the future or in the near future?
Strahinja Vukoičić: I think it will only be improved, as Hundrx introduces an additional component. In addition to the functionalities that Twitter itself provides, you now get a completely new parallel system that attaches to Twitter and coexists with all Twitter accounts. Every user who wants to use Hundrx can install it.
For the time being, this is a parallel system, so Twitter will not be decentralized through Hundrx. We introduce it as an additional component where everyone participating is essentially on a decentralized platform. They use Web 3.0 and blockchain technology, social tokens, and DRX tokens. DRX is the native token of Hundrx itself, which represents a kind of means used to produce, or mint, social tokens.
The social tokens themselves do not allow you to manipulate or speculate on something and earn money that way, this is not their primary purpose. The primary purpose is to enable people who create content to communicate with their audience in a very transparent and decentralized way through these social tokens.
Also, the idea is that in the next phases, people who have the most tokens will be some first circle of followers, the second circle, and so on. This way, profile owners can reward them, give them tickets to some events, or schedule a weekly Zoom call, etc.
All these things are in the initial phase, so whether there will be governance tokens – there won’t, because you can’t influence what the profile owner will ultimately do, nor can you manage that profile regardless of having a certain stake in it. On the other hand, you have an opportunity to interact with the creator.
Web Mind: Will these social tokens only be available to celebrities and influencers, or will anyone have the opportunity to participate in it?
Strahinja Vukoičić: In the first stage, we don’t want to get into a situation where it explodes immediately, becomes popular for a month, and then deflates. We want to proactively “semi-introduce” that concept because it is new. People will either understand it or not.
We have a system that measures the engagement of the followers who mint tokens. Depending on that engagement, they are allowed to mint new ones. We will cascade the release of how many new profiles can get that social token status.
In the beginning, it will most likely be the most influential ones who have hundreds of thousands of followers, because those who have around 300 followers do not bring any value to the system. We want and have made a system that gradationally allows a few new profiles to be introduced into the system every, let’s say, 100,000 tokens.
That way, we want people to first learn how to use it, see what they get from it. We don’t want to be another story that exploded, another NFT collection that was popular for three weeks. I think this is too good a product to suffer such fate, and that’s why we want to work gradually, in stages.
Web Mind: Will all users get a chance to mint tokens at some point in the future?
Strahinja Vukoičić: Yes, this is the ultimate goal. It’s possible, but we want it to take place where it should happen first, and once we learn some things, and realize if and where we made mistakes, we can step back. But the bottom line is that absolutely every Twitter user should eventually be allowed to mint tokens.
What we want to avoid is doing things rapidly and massively, only for users not to recognize any benefits from it. We want to phase in new profiles after a certain period of time, for example weekly or after a specific number of tokens. That way new profiles are unlocked.
For now, it is planned to be done in stages, and as the community grows, as people demand more, more profiles will be unlocked.
Strahinja Vukoičić, CEO of Moonstruck.io
Web Mind: How can you mint tokens?
Strahinja Vukoičić: Essentially, you install Hundrx, buy DRX tokens, and then go to the user’s profile. Depending on the current supply of that particular profile, if there is any, use DRX tokens to mint social tokens. The token price depends on how many are currently available, the amount you need, and how many you want to buy.
If you are the first, 1,000 DRX tokens can be 1,000 social tokens. Who will be first depends on us, because we have a way of measuring the engagement of social token holders. Based on that, we assign tiers and according to them, users can receive a certain number of tokens.
All followers of a particular profile can mint tokens. The owner himself has a stake in trading his tokens – the more popular his tokens are, the more they are transferred, the more their price rises, he gets, say, 1% of it. Therefore, he has a very transparent income which drives him to stay on Twitter, be active, create content, etc.
In all this, the profile owner is somewhat passive. Followers receive more benefits as they can have some stake, as the profile itself becomes a kind of shareholder company. The more tokens you have, the higher tier you get, and therefore you can receive a reward from the profile owner.
Web Mind: In addition to these social tokens, are there any other benefits from this integration?
Strahinja Vukoičić: We are still in the first stage. Hundrx has developed the Web 2.0 part, meaning they have created an extension that you can install to see where you can mint tokens.
The project was demonstrated at the Consensus Conference, one of the largest Web 3.0 conferences held in America from April 26 to 28. On Wednesday, April 26, we had the first official demo of Hundrx’s extension for Twitter. Our team supported the presentation of the demo.
At the time, people had the opportunity to see the product that Hundrx presents – an extension that can be installed on any browser so that you get another box on the left side of Twitter. You can also use the DRX native token to produce social tokens.
Participants who were physically there had the opportunity to test the demo, and currently, only they could do it. The official beta launch will be with smart contract implementation only on the testnet, and in the next two to three months, it will also move to the mainnet, i.e., the main blockchain network, depending on how the token sale goes. It goes through three phases and can be completed in three weeks or three months.
Web Mind: Is there a specific time when we can expect more widespread use, or is that still not in the pipeline?
Strahinja Vukoičić: Several cycles of DRX token sales are planned in the upcoming months. This sale is the foundation for users who own or trade them to interact with Hundrx on Twitter. Users must own the native token to produce social tokens. You can install the extension, you can try it out, but until you have DRX tokens, you cannot produce social tokens.
Web Mind: What are the biggest challenges you could face or have already faced when it comes to Web 3.0 integration and transformation of Twitter?
Strahinja Vukoičić: These are mostly technological challenges, business challenges will come de facto. Since we are a technological partner for Web 3.0 and blockchain implementation, and Hundrx is responsible for business and promotion, I can only talk from a technology standpoint.
Technologically speaking, the biggest challenge was the implementation of the bonding curve. This is a mathematical model by which the price of social tokens increases with the increase in their total number in circulation.
There is a mathematical model that we proposed, and in Web 3.0 there are mathematical functions that are not so easy to implement. There is a function that grows exponentially, but mathematically speaking, it was challenging to implement the integral of that function on the blockchain.
That integral represents the entire current supply, taking into account each subsequent one. This is the biggest challenge, to discretize, or code in a discrete way, the integral of that function because the number of tokens actually represents the integral of that function, as it is not always just a number.
Web Mind: How was the partnership with Hundrx born?
Strahinja Vukoičić: I will take this opportunity to mention the projects we have been involved in. One of them is the umbrella project Serbia Innovates, which has been implementing the Supercluster Project for a year now. The Supercluster Project includes four superclusters focused on technologies where Serbia has a very good global position and follows world trends. In addition to blockchain, the other three superclusters cover agrotech, medtech, and gaming.
How did the idea come about? USAID, as a funder, supported the entire Serbia Innovates umbrella project in which we participate together with MVP Workshop, and the Serbian Blockchain Initiative (SBI). Our partners are the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FON), Science and Technology Park Niš, and the Faculty of Computer Science (RAF).
Through the Serbia Innovates project and the blockchain and Web 3.0 superclusters, whose official name is Excellent 3, we had the opportunity as a company to participate in the web summit where we met and established initial contact with the Hundrx team. Three months later, we received an invitation from Hundrx to collaborate on the project.
They had already been working on the idea when they reached a point where they could no longer do without blockchain integration. They approached us, and we helped and advised them on the architecture of the solution itself, smart contracts, blockchain selection… That’s how we gained their trust, which led to further cooperation.
Web Mind: Do you have any further expectations from the collaboration with Hundrx in terms of other projects?
Strahinja Vukoičić: They are currently very focused on this product, which we have only improved and are working on the realization of the Web 3.0 part of it all. So, in principle, yes, our partnership has started commercially, they approached us with the idea to engage us to do it for them. We recognized the value in it, we connected well, and we gained their trust after only two meetings.
The chemistry is very good because the team that leads it has very advanced ideas on one hand, and on the other hand, they quickly adopted everything we advised them on. They realized that we have exceptional knowledge and that we are truly experts in Web 3.0, we are not just guns for hire. We didn’t negotiate to join the project, they offered us a partnership and collaboration because they needed us, and we liked the idea because we are working for the first time on such a large platform.
