Tip Coin: Tweet mining, limitless potential?

Author: bayemon.eth, ChainCatcher

According to a report by DataReportal, the number of active social media digital identities worldwide has reached 4.8 billion, nearly 60% of the global population. Based on historical growth rates, it is projected that by 2027, the number of social media users worldwide will soar to 5.85 billion. From a market share perspective, the value of the social media application market reached $49.09 billion in 2022, and from 2023 to 2030, the compound annual growth rate is expected to reach 26.2%. Additionally, GWI data indicates that the average time spent on social media by the global population is approximately 6 hours and 37 minutes. With an average lifespan of 73 years, a person spends about 11 years of their life entirely on social media.

Whether in the Web2 or Web3 world, social interaction has long become a rigid demand for users. The enormous market share and the insatiable demand have provided ample reason for more and more projects to take a bite out of the "social" pie. Recently, following Friend.tech's attraction of attention to the social field in the Web3 world, another social project called Tip Coin has started to make waves.

Tip Coin is a new social project based on X (formerly Twitter) and combined with cryptocurrency, aiming to allow users to earn points through content creation via "tweet mining" (which may later turn into project tokens).

Users only need to bind their accounts on the Tip Coin official website and, while creating, retweeting, or commenting on content on X (formerly Twitter), @tipcoineth and add the $tip tag to earn points based on views, likes, replies, retweets, and quote retweets.

As it is currently in a very early stage with a low barrier to entry, Tip Coin attracted about 100,000 users to participate in tweet publishing and commenting just four days after its launch (officially launched on September 1).

However, for current Web3 social platforms, whether it is Friend.tech, which quickly "rose high" only to become a "gambling paradise," or Lens Protocol, which has been busy but still hasn't made a splash, it seems that no one can truly grasp the windfall of Web3 social and become a "timeless" application.

Currently, apart from the simple interaction of earning points, Tip Coin has not disclosed its real operating model. How it will develop in the future and how Tip Coin will empower users are still unknowns. The official stated that a contract will be released soon, and the subsequent gameplay and development model have certainly piqued users' interest.

How can users participate? Can Tip Coin, "standing on the shoulders of Web2 giants," survive in the fiercely competitive social field? This article will briefly analyze Tip Coin's current marketing strategy and discuss the challenges it faces.

Tip Coin Rules and Strategies

In simple terms, Tip Coin's current gameplay can be summarized as "Web2 giant traffic diversion + Web3 token airdrop," using the existing X (formerly Twitter) relationship network as a traffic entry point to attract early users with the expectation of future token airdrops in the Web3 world.

Basic Rules

Step 1: Visit the official website, click the login button in the upper right corner, and select to connect your Twitter account.

Step 2: Follow the prompts on the official website to activate your account. You need to send a verification tweet with $tip @TipCoineth and retweet the official Tip Coin tweet, then click "check status" to complete account activation.

After successful activation, the account will have received 10,000 points.

In addition to the initial tweet with @TipCoineth $tip to earn 10,000 points, Tip Coin's "daily tasks" can earn rewards through the following three methods:

--- Original Tweet: Publish an original tweet with @TipCoineth $tip, with a point multiplier of 25, initial points (just for posting) 10,000, and then additional points based on tweet views, likes, replies, quotes, and retweets. You can earn points for up to 5 original tweets daily.

--- Tipped Reply: Post a reply with @TipCoineth $tip under someone else's tweet, with a point multiplier of 1, and a daily limit of 50 replies that can earn points. While Tipped Replies can also gain additional points based on views and likes, there is a maximum limit of 25,000 points.

--- Replied Kickbacks: Receive replies from others and also earn points, with a multiplier of 1/10, and no daily limit.

The point additions based on tweet views, likes, replies, quotes, retweets, and reference quotes are as follows:

PS: For specific point calculations, you can refer to the official Expected Point Calculator

Step 3: Repeat the above "daily tasks" within each week (Tip Coin Epoch is weekly) to become the social king and have the chance to be featured on the social leaderboard.

Step 4: Redemption: Starting from September 1, each week will be an "Epoch," calculating all social activities' points earned in the previous period and redeeming them for the project token $tip in the current period.

Scoring Strategies

1. Complete daily tasks diligently: This strategy is more suitable for Twitter influencers or KOLs with built-in traffic. This may also be one of the reasons Tip Coin chose to directly associate with X accounts, leveraging the appeal of traffic to attract a wave of new users and fully utilize "fan economy." The top two users on the current leaderboard, @Smartecio and @ix_wilson, both follow the traffic monetization route.

2. Use "cash power": Since there is still some time before the end of Tip Coin Epoch 1, and the Tip Coin official has not disclosed the token economics model, for most people, the "profit" that Tip Coin can bring and the value of the tip token are still unknown. Therefore, for Twitter users without a fan base, apart from the fixed income from daily tasks, the traffic attraction part must show some "sincerity" by using "real money" to exchange for comments, likes, and retweets. This is also the strategy currently employed by the third-ranked user @CryptoYjj—selecting 5 lucky viewers from the comments section every 24 hours to send 50 USDT. It is noteworthy that the top two users have fan counts of 19,000 and 39,000, while the third user has only 1,353 fans, showing that even with a vastly smaller fan base, they can maintain points at nearly the same level, proving that "money can indeed do anything."

3. Technology and hard work: As the official only checks for "quantity standards" such as posting, likes, and views, for the current environment of "fake accounts" rampant on Twitter (X), directly using bots to inflate numbers is quite suitable for users who want to farm with zero cost. Additionally, users can consider adding tags like #Vitalik when tweeting to trigger bots to automatically comment as a "passive technique" for traffic generation. However, the official seems to have noticed this and stated that the impact of bot interference may gradually be eliminated in future version iterations and network upgrades.

Challenges Facing Tip Coin

From the perspective of the Tip Coin project itself, since it just launched on September 1, the first Epoch will not conclude until the 8th, and the points settlement and currency exchange phase will follow. Therefore, in terms of development cycle, current users cannot discern the project's profit model, and Tip Coin has not disclosed its token economics model nor conducted any token airdrops. As mentioned earlier, the value of the project token tip is still unknown. For the vast majority of users drawn in by the airdrop, if the initial value does not meet expectations, Tip Coin may face severe backlash. Furthermore, as a social product, Tip Coin has not deployed contracts and currently relies solely on Twitter posts, retweets, and likes to mechanically earn points. Even built on the Web2 social giant Twitter, the gameplay still appears overly monotonous, limiting its long-term appeal to users.

In comparison, Mask Network, which also targets social giants and aims to lower user barriers to become a bridge from Web2 to Web3, has led a new paradigm in Web3 social by enabling users to send cryptocurrency red envelopes, make encrypted payments, and send encrypted messages without changing their current social media. Beyond simple social functions, Mask Network has integrated various rich features such as NFT trading, ITO, charity fundraising, digital identity, and even voting and DAO community governance.

However, even though Mask Network has considered "laying out a social ecosystem," it still cannot prevent people from losing interest in SocialFi projects after a "three-minute heat." Therefore, for the current Tip Coin, if the goal is to become a sustainable social platform, functionality and practicality indeed need to be significantly enhanced in the next phase.

Finally, returning to the essence of social interaction, sociology defines it as "a social activity in which individuals interact under certain historical conditions, engaging in material and spiritual exchanges, accompanied by the transmission of information elements, sharing views, emotions, experiences, and so on." Tip Coin's current form of "social network as an asset, treating daily sharing as KPI" seems to focus more on the results of social behavior while neglecting the emotional communication and value sharing that should be present in a "normal" social process. When participants lose interest after the initial excitement, and the airdrop expectations cannot rekindle their tweeting enthusiasm, the subsequent performance of Tip Coin may serve as a true measure of its "sustainability."