Hey METABBS!

There are many types of social media sites out there, with new platforms and formats popping up on the regular. Some of them are pretty niche, while others have the potential to become the next Instagram or TikTok.

BBS network is often referred to as the “decentralized reddit” - and with no doubt, there are several similarities between reddit and BBS network: With both, you can share content in different spaces. Each of those spaces have specific rules and are moderated by the administration of the boards (or the forums in reddit). Such types of Social Media channels are used for finding, sharing and discussing different kinds of information, opinions, and news on a specific topic.

Another form of social media sites are media sharing networks such as Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube. Media sharing types of Social Media are used to find and share photographs, live video, video and other kinds of media on the web. This is where APPICS comes into play: While BBS Network tries to disrupt reddit, APPICS tries to disrupt Instagram. 

APPICS tries to combat the flaws of web2 social media, where 100% of the generated value goes to the shareholders and NOT to the users who generate the content. In this aspect, BBS network and APPICS are similar. APPICS uses a different distribution model however: The content creator earns 65% of the sum, the users who voted earn 25% and 10% returns to the APPICS platform. APPICS makes use of blockchain technology. Every time the “like” button is used, coins are created which turns every user of APPICS into a human mining machine and instead of paying the miners who secure the network, APPICS pays the people who post, comment and like. The APX token is the currency of the APPICS platform. APX tokens can be used to participate in the reward-system, to vote on content within the APPICS app and earn APX tokens for sharing, commenting and voting on content. The more tokens users hold in their integrated account wallet, the more they increase their voting influence, meaning they will be able to assign higher rewards with their upvote. The APX token is running on the telos blockchain. This approach is very similar to the approach we chose at BBS network, because it is transparent and efficient to use blockchains to distribute value. You will find this approach at most web3 social medias.

So far, the project does sound very interesting. But what good are those concepts if the social media is no fun? To test out if it is actually fun to use APPICS I downloaded the App from the AppStore and here is my short review:

The “discover page” looked quite similar to the browsing page from Instagram – here you can find popular posts which might be interesting for you based on the categories that you can choose (e. g. NFT, lifestyle, art, fitness and much more). Here it seems like as it is rather easy to gain attention on APPICS, contributions do have more than 100 “votes” and were able to generate several dollars of APX tokens. I posted myself however two pictures and were gaining no revenue at all from those and only 2 people engaged with my content. Also, for other “ordinary” users I checked who were not on the “discover page” did not generate much revenue or engagement. To access the web3 features you need to set up a wallet. This process takes less than one minute, so good job with that. Activity is surprisingly high, there is a post almost every minute. APPICS is working on implementing a NFT marketplace currently, so I am glad to see that the development is still active.

But where does the value of those APX tokens come from? Well, I did quite some research on that question and eventually I stumbled upon a YouTube video published by their company channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EGIimk4ABo&t). Here, they state that “the APX tokens are allocated to a reward fund called the reward pool”. From there the tokens are distributed to users based on the value the users contribute to the platform. The value they contributed is determined through a voting system integrated in the app.

There is no monetization at all, so accordingly there is also no real revenue the users generate through e. g. advertisements. BBS network also struggles with this very problem. Currently, most of the revenue is artificially generated through the engagement mining program – but there is a plan: When the funds of the engagement mining run out, advertisers pay bbs tokens for impressions. The engagement mining program will be substituted by advertisements. With APPICS I could not find any information on future plans of monetization, and I did quite some research.

Also APPICS is not transparent as well about the tokenomics of the project. On their website they linked coingecko for more insights about the token (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/appics). As you can see, there is no info at all about mcap or circulating supply. There is no contract address and the linked blockexplorer does not work. Very, very sketchy… And yes, this might sound biased coming from a community moderator (I probably am a bit biased nevertheless lol), but what I really learnt to appreciate about BBS network (also partly because of this research) is the transparency we have here. You can find detailed information about the project in the whitepaper (https://bit.ly/BBS-WP), there is detailed information about the rewards integrated in the UI of the website (https://bbs.market/METABBS/rewards) and there also is a block explorer for EOS and ETH and also a record of the blockchain (https://bloks.io/account/deweb.eosn).

To conclude, APPICS does seem like a really interesting project and is in some aspects surprisingly similar to BBS network. However, APPICS lacks transparency. There are not enough insights about tokenomics or about future plans to monetize the platform. What happens when the reward fund runs out? Also, it is really hard to find any information about APPICS and you need to dig quite deep to find any results.