Nuance

Inspiration

Fair monetisation for authors is a key differentiator between blogging platforms of web2 vs web3. With our beta launched (nuance.xyz) we want to start building the monetisation capabilities of Nuance. Supernova has provided us the perfect opportunity to deliver our first steps toward this.

What it does

Readers can applaud (clap) articles which transfers Nuance credits from the reader to the author. Essentially the reader tipping the author. Nuance credits are for testing purposes only and have no monetary value.

How we built it

First we had to decide what was the 'best' thing on our immediate roadmap to deliver as part of Supernova, then we had to carve out which part of the thing we could deliver within a few weeks. We needed to cut scope to the bone to make sure that we would deliver.

Challenges we ran into

Securing the transaction. Making sure authors couldn't tip themselves. Figuring out how to seed the initial tokens (since we are yet to mint our own token).

Nuance is built fully on-chain from multiple canisters, written in Motoko and typescript.

Due to our multi-canister architecture, we had to create functions that would interact with each other but wouldn't expose any security concerns from being public. To ensure the functions remained secure, we programmed much of the interface to take place from the post itself. Then the operation falls in the hands of the user profiles canister, which checks to ensure it interacts with trusted canisters each time it executes a function.

We consider this the precursor to tokenization; once presented with a standard we feel is dependable enough to be adopted by our community, we will implement real tokens for applause, so we had to make this feature with that in mind. To start, we ensured that users could not applaud their articles to game applause, and we also protected them from 0 balance applause.. meaning if the users have 0 credits, they cannot applaud. These features required call and response from multiple canisters.

To kick off our credit launch we needed to write yet another secure function that allows a trusted nuance developer to spawn credits for users to spend and we also created a UI/UX on the front end in which users can see their credit balance, the applause they've received in total and the applause they've received per article.

The Nuance team has recently implemented Stoic wallet into the platform, meaning users can log in with a wallet provider and will have the ability to carry assets in said wallet. Our next steps in the monetization path will be selecting a robust standard and integrating it into our architecture with some of the controls we've created for the credits.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Over the past months, we have delivered many things of which we are proud. Our integration with ModClub helps us build trust with our authors and readers. This is a world first. The world's first blogging platform built entirely on-chain with content moderated by the world's first moderation as a service entirely on-chain.

For Supernova we are proud to be delivering the first part of a capability which differentiates web3 from web2 blogging. A capability that will enable fair rewards for authors.

What we learned

Carving out a small piece of the larger capability whilst still providing value to users and incentivising the "right" behaviour.

What's next for Nuance

We will keep building out the monetisation capability to ensure that we deliver one of our most important promises - fair monetisation for authors. We have more features to build into this capability and we are only just getting started.