A Q&A with t2 CEO & Founder, Mengyao Han
All you need to know about t2, the new protocol and social platform for content curation designed to fundamentally change the way we value time spent on reading.
What is t2?
t2 (time²) is a decentralized online publisher built to capture users’ passive contributions like time and attention as they engage with content.
The decentralized platform not only allows users to own the content and its curation, but also the value and knowledge it generates. However, even more revolutionary, it empowers users to take ownership of their attention and accumulate culture as public goods.
So this is an application geared for Web3?
With the introduction of diverse token incentives that are driving the Web3 space and its economy, the new era of the internet is slowly but surely blending the long-established concepts of work and leisure. These two, often polarized domains tend to clash – competing for one of the most precious resources known to man – time.
On t2, time serves as a matrix of value capture and distribution. By monetizing time, the protocol enables users to earn TXT (time x time) tokens, which can be reinvested on the platform or exchanged for real-world goods and services.
Built to turn time and attention into discernible and distributable value, t2’s technology passively rewards users to simply read, learn and explore.
So you are essentially gamifying reading with t2?
We are incentivizing deep reading, since the global reduced attention span is a societal problem.
Also the current creator's economy is quite broken. How to align the incentives between readers, writers and curators, t2 has a unique answer by capturing the most bottom-up passive contribution: our attention itself.
By capturing the curation value from users’ attention, the platform is poised to drive both the content quality and the growth of t2 communities. Meanwhile, by incentivizing reading, the protocol ushers a reinforced feedback loop created to drive the growth of the content and knowledge markets.
Being a decentralized, community-driven social platform, t2 establishes an ecosystem in which all users, including writers, readers, and curators, play an integral part in curating the content, reaping fair rewards for their contribution.
The time a user spends reading t2 articles on-chain, tokens are minted and dispersed to the content creator, the reader, and the community. On t2, readers own the value of their engagement and creativity, to depart from Web2’s subscription model, which defined them as consumers, and their attention as a commodity.
How is the content curated?
On t2 content is curated by different communities, and users can participate in this open curation within their own group. So t2 does not purely rely on the social graph which tends to enclose the user inside his/her own friend circle blinding them from world-class high-quality content, nor rely on the algorithmic recommendations only which are efficient but make us emotionally abandoned. In t2 content curation is bringing both world-class content, and the sentimental value from our social connectivity.
To curate the content, community members coordinate within their domains called “territories” through voting and fostering their community’s culture. On the t2 platform, each territory acts as a DAO. To join a territory, you simply stake some native tokens then you become productive inside as a member. You can choose which territories to allocate your productivity, simply by staking or unstaking within different territories with a minimal swap fee, and your reward is highly oriented around what you do inside intead of what you own.
If you wish to engage further, you simply lock your territory tokens for a fixed time and become a territory curator, then additional rewards will be given to you based on the territory's curation results.
Content creators submit articles to territories to be syndicated. As the attention attracted by the content grows, the value generated for readers, writers, and communities increases.
The newly minted token from the listed content then gets split between the creator, territory readers, curators, and the community. Finally, the articles which has accumulated the highest amount of reading time, will become territory artifacts and serve as the public goods of the culture, all happening on-chain curated by human attention alone.
Seems t2 is oriented around readers, what about writers? What’s their journey on t2?
Without high-quality content, there will be no deep reading in the first place. They are on t2 for several reasons: Own their work, get paid fairly, expand their audience, and connect with their readers and each other. By listing their content inside territories, they get more eyeball value and this can help their work to grow based on the quality, not how many followers they have.
Do you see this as the future of decentralized publishing?
We are making a great effort to define our own future in publishing.
The returned value is based on users' real engagement and collaboration instead of centralized opaque algorithms. Also t2 is the first mover valuing the attention and human effort itself instead of monetizing content with speculations.
Also as a publisher, t2 extends its mission from only delivering the content, but also to make reading sexy again, bring people together, empathize how difficult and valuable reading and writing is, and eventually help us regain our attention back and enjoy a better life.
Beyond the same incentives, t2 connects different users, whether they are reading, curating, or writing to earn–through shared taste, cultural interests, and topic expertise – creating a fertile soil for decentralized content communities to form, grow, and nurture their own subcultures.
On the t2 platform, each territory acts as a DAO. And the territories function as the reputable content houses creators can collaborate with, to reach for a broader audience, with additional curation from the territory curators backing their work.
Territories cultivate their own internal cultures by focusing on specific curation themes and setting territory-specific sub-rules–including which content is relevant and what constitutes acceptable behaviour. By utilizing this conduct enforcement model, t2 enables territories to police themselves, while giving high-effort members an additional token incentive and the performance of the territory reflects the subculture's overall value. Users can easily see the horizontal landscape of the social interests, and make their own choices what's the best way of spending their attention.
So, this is Web3’s way of deep reading?
Most people agree on the inherent values of reading. Even so, developing a reading habit is an investment–of both time and attention. Not finding the time and the convenience of indulging in less attention-grabbing formats, such as podcasts and videos, are among people's top most common excuses for not reading. At t2 we have built a platform that empathizes the difficulty, assists us with distraction-free reading experiences, and allows users to enjoy tangible returns.
Web2 changed our lives in ways we never thought possible. It connected us and allowed us to communicate, learn and share like never before. At a high price–making it impossible for us to maintain ownership of our own data, attention, and contributed network value.
t2 resolves those issues with web3 technologies and translates users’ subjective and passive contributions into tangible social values–promoting not only beneficial engagements but also long-term individual liberalization.
What is your ultimate vision for building t2?
I believe all good things in life come from deep relationships. t2 helps us in deep reading and rewards us for doing the difficult but right things. If t2 can make the world value deep reading more and bring more peace and joy, that’ll be a great thing to witness.