(Image: Twetch)
How would you feel if your carefully crafted messages, posted to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram disappeared forever? Would you prefer to have more ownership of your content? Now Twetch, a new social app, built for the blockchain, ensures you can keep control of your data forever.
Twetch is a social media application built on top of the Bitcoin SV protocol, which enables you to put data into blockchain transactions.
The app is an interface for the blockchain — the public transaction ledger of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin — which enables users to read and write information to the chain, pay to post, and earn Bitcoin for their messages.
Users have complete ownership of their data from the start. The data remains your own property and you assign your identity to each piece of data using a signature on the Bitcoin network. Similar to the returning Tsu platform, when you share your content on Twetch, if people like your content, you can make money from their likes and comments.
It uses micropayments and micro-fees business model. There is no third-party platform taking a cut of the cash, and your data stays yours forever — regardless of the application used to access it.
Your data is resilient, pubic, and immutable on the blockchain. Any web service can re-use the Twetch data that is hosted on-chain and build their platform with this data.
The Twetch application interface to the Bitcoin network looks a little like Twitter. If someone likes, comments, or shares one of your posts, or tags you in a post, you receive money (from 0.1c from a mention, up to about 8c for a like, depending on the social validation of your post).
According to Twetch CEO, Josh Petty (Elon Moist on Twitter and Twetch), Twetch is ‘non-custodial’ — meaning it never touches users’ money. Users need to connect their Bitcoin wallets, to an app like Money Button to start Twetch.
This Bitcoin wallet has a private key 12-word passphrase, held secret by the user, who is the only person with access to their money.
Which Bitcoin protocol to use?
Bitcoin SV (BSV) is a standalone peer-to-peer network that emerged in November 2018. It enables users to make micro-transactions and put blocks of data on-chain (onto the blockchain) — where it will remain forever.
The Bitcoin SV (BSV) block size protocol has recently been uplifted to 2GB per block. This is more scalable than the 1MB block size of the original Bitcoin core (BTC) protocol, or Bitcoin cash (BCH), which do not scale as well as BSV.
Currently, the BTC network can only do about three to seven transactions per second at peak periods, which is far less than transactions through Visa at 2,000 to 56,000 transactions per second. At the moment, Bitcoin SV can handle about 2,000 transactions per second.
This seems to indicate that the BSV protocol could scale further — unlike BTC. BTC’s code has been heavily modified and has moved away from the original concept of Bitcoin.
According to the Bitcoin Association’s Jimmy Nguyen, the Bitcoin SV project is dedicated to fulfilling the original vision of its creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto wrote the definitive white paper on Bitcoin — the same white paper as the Bitcoin paper published by Craig S Wright.
Petty said:
“The beautiful thing about Twetch being built on Bitcoin is that Twetch as a company never owns or holds funds for the user. Any money earned instantly goes directly into the user’s wallet.
When you create an account on Twetch, you are creating a Bitcoin wallet with a private key (12 word phrase) that only the user knows.
Every interaction on Twetch means a payment directly to the user, they own their money 100% instantly the moment they are paid. If a user wants to trade the Bitcoin for cash, they can do so.”