Launchpool AMA Recap — Clout.Art
Welcome back to Launchpool’s AMA sessions!
Earlier this week, we had a fantastic AMA with the team over at Clout.Art where we discussed everything from the NFT space to community development, to their future social media plans.
For those who missed it, heres the recap!
Guest: The Clout.art Team
Date: Thursday February 10, 2022
Host: Mickie Ann Perez
Location: Launchpool Community Channel
Q: Please would you give our Community a quick reminder of the Clout.Art project?
A: Clout.art started as an NFT minting platform and a marketplace for social media posts, but has recently made a big pivot. So, it’s really great we have this AMA session to bring everyone up to speed.
Most of Launchpool community will remember Clout.art as the easiest way to mint an Instagram post and sell it. We had a successful IDO back in October and before that did a pre-IDO on Launchpool that broke the standing record for most $LPOOL staked.
Right now, the project has restructured a bit, so we have two projects — Sway Social and Clout.art — that basically work hand in hand, but with a different vision and target market.
Q: Could you tell us about the main developments since the raise?
A: After launching Clout.art we realized that the token model of Clout.art is too powerful to just be used by our platform. At the same time we were not able to validate some product assumptions we had with Clout.art.
NFTs are an amazing tool, but for the mainstream — the non-crypto crowd we tried to tap into — they were still a bit Sci-Fi. So, we had to rethink how to position Clout.art, experiment with the core product and find ways to maximize the value of SWAY.
So, the number one major development is definitely the launch of Sway Social as a separate protocol that enables social capital to exist in web3 and open metaverse.
The second is to turn Clout.art from a marketplace to a platform for influencers, that takes care of the NFT process end-to-end. To the marketing initiated, we like to think of it as Hubspot for NFTs for influencers.
So, this is somewhat important: we have recently made a significant transition where, on the token side, we focus on Sway Social. Sway was only a component of Clout.art before but it made sense to break it out as a standalone protocol for any decentralised NFT marketplace to use.
Q: How are you tracking against your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps.
A: The initial goal around making Clout.art more accessible, mobile-friendly, even non-crypto friendly have all been met. We integrated with various service trying to make it extremely easy for people to onboard and mint their NFTs, but still found it was too difficult for the majority.
With Clout.art we are 100% focused on validating our assumptions on platform approach.
And with Sway Social we have a separate roadmap for that focuses mostly on bringing the protocol to life and operational with some partners. But we see it in three phases:
1) Basic infrastructure for Q1
2) Transition phase for Q2
3) Expansion phase for Q3 & Q4
With more available in the latest whitepaper swaysocial.org/whitepaper.pdf
Q: What are the potential barriers to the project hitting its roadmap targets in 2022 and how are you preparing for these challenges?
A: In terms of technology, we found out that choosing Polygon only was not the wisest decision, so we are actively exploring and talking to other blockchains. It’s surprising that even today it’s hard to have a L1 solution that would work great for NFTs and everything that comes with them.
Generally, the biggest barrier is our own internal process. We’re aware of the fact that we’re building a product. Products can only be built by testing and validation. So far, we haven’t seen any of the social media NFT platform take off — we’re all still in the learning phase.
So, we don’t just build stuff blindly. We try to go towards a sustainable model that would work not just during the hype, but long-term also.
Q: Do you have your top choices as of the moment you can share to the community?
A: I can say that we are really close with the BSC team. But more will follow in the next couple weeks.
Q: What marketing plans do you have in store for Clout.art in 2022?
A: With Clout.art specifically we plan to work closely with creators that we bring on board. It’s a bit of a different gameplay, but these niche communities are something we want to be really good at.
There is always events and conferences we will participate at, but generally we want our marketing to work with creators and for creators. And we really believe we can build an organic model that would keep this engine running.
Q: What is the best thing to do with the token at the moment? Should our users be staking for example.
A: Yes! We have just released our first generation of Creator pools. Token holders can go and stake with their favourite creator’s Instagram profile, Tik Tok profile or just their wallet address — and get promotional APR even up to 444%
With the creator pools we are slowly increasing the TVL that will be crucial once the final version of the protocol is live and creators start claiming their pools.
Stake now at https://creatorpools.live
Q: Can you talk us through the longer-term vision for the token, how it interacts with the industry and what are the uses within its own ecosystem?
A: The vision of the token is very much aligned with the future we are headed towards.
Every building block in Metaverse (game item, avatar, collectible, social media post, land title, etc.) is an NFT. Behind every NFT creator is a community that establishes the value of creator’s social capital.
In traditional Web 2 social media platforms, the number of ‘Likes’ or ‘Followers’ is directly correlated to their earnings power. Creator is primarily valued by the number of followers he can engage with.
Sway introduces a web3 equivalent model where social capital is translated into an asset class. Instead of ‘following‘ a creator, participants can stake with their creator pool. Value is established based on the pool participation TVL. Stakeholders are providing a social underwriting facility for creators through a subDAO.
Q: Do you have any upcoming news or partnerships you would like to share?
A: Yes! With Clout.art we’re launching an NFT auction today with one of the most popular fitness instructors in the US, Dr. Robin B. We’re now in full execution mode to bring at least 1 creator on board every week and tap into their mainstream network so we learn more and optimize the process.
On Sway Social, we’re actively talking to NFT marketplaces (some of the biggest as well). The thing is all these marketplaces have a very basic token model, and creator pools can be used with their creators in a way where we have a win-win-win situation. It’s really that powerful.
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Q: The 444% APR for staking is valid up to which date and what is the locking period?
A: We have 3 staking plans. The first one, was available only in January and had 444% APY, now we have 222% and 111% where you have to lock up your tokens for some time.
Q: After this protocol, will there be more protocol for other reasons?
A: This one is the one. But it made sense to build it to capture and acquire the value of $SWAY way more than Clout.art alone.
Q: Why choose influencer for your staking and not just your own very platform as staking on sway platform requires about 1000 $Sway isn’t that too high. Looking at some of the claims from here are not up to that?
A: We had to put a low barrier of entry for staking.
Picking a creator is not mandatory, though. You can if you want to speculate on who will claim their pool first and start bringing in rewards. If not, you can just stake with clout.art like many others.
Q: Can you stake with any creator (yourself also) or just some of the famous Creators?
A: You can stake with anyone on IG, TikTok, any ENS domain and even any wallet. We don’t limit this, it’s a decentralized world and all of this happens on smart contracts in the backend.
Q: What partnerships with other social media platforms are you looking at?
A: These are other social media NFT platforms — our competitors. Multiple interesting projects out there that want to build social experiences with the help of NFT-ing social media content.
Q: How are you different from your competition?
A: With Clout.art we were the first to tap into existing content, because we saw more value in engaging with communities that already exist on IG for creators.
Right now, I think we’re the first guys going for a platform SaaS-like approach for influencers and their agencies. Again, it’s all being validated now.
Re Sway… it’s too futuristic to have any competition, Checkout our whitepaper, you’ll see why!
Q: Does it affect your earnings by who you stake with?
A: Right now, while we’re still building it, everyone gets the promotional fixed APY. Once we launch this will change. The claimed pools will be able to get rewards from creators who opt-in.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Discord Link: https://discord.gg/cloutdotart
For Sway Social, we’re still around on Telegram at https://t.me/swayprotocol
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cloutdotart & https://twitter.com/swayprotocol
