Chris Messina

Relevance Coin - 1 billion free coins to improve relevance on the web

by
Top Hunter

We're creating a new category—relevance—to let you discover, save, and read what's worth your attention. To make it happen, we're giving away 1 billion coins to early users for free and we'll buy them back later with our profits.

Product Hunters who join until October 13 start with 20 coins.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Hunter
Super excited about what my friend @dominikg is attempting here... You'd be forgiven for imagining that Refind is just the second coming of delicious united with the save-it-later goodness of Pocket and Instapaper... instead, he wants to start with those services and then build a platform to reward those contributors who find, curate, and share the best content on the web. It's a bold new inventive take on the coin offering model... and one that I think is extremely well timed (especially considering Twitter's possible addition of a "Save for Later" feature!). If you still need an invite to Refind, you can have one of mine!
Dominik Grolimund
@chrismessina @adithya Thanks for the questions. I haven't heard of Quora Credits, but I'm planning to write the back story of this announcement at some point.
Ross Currie
@chrismessina @dominikg @adithya I really liked the idea behind Steemit, which seems to operate on similar principles, but found it fell down in two key areas: 1) Almost all of the popularised content posted to Steemit is about blockchain, or about Steemit itself 2) Because of the monetary incentive, we're seeing the sort of lame comments that bots write on Instagram posts - a whole bunch of "Great post!" comment spam in the hope that someone with steem power upvotes your comment and you earn some Steem. From a quick glance, it looks like you might have solved the first issue (reminds me a bit of Nuzzel in the way content is recommended), and have a wider breadth of content, but I'm curious as to how you are tackling the second issue... or if it's even an issue, given the way your platform works.
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Hunter
@adithya @rossdcurrie great questions and observations. I watched Steemit with interest too, but like many platforms that are predicated on novelty or a gimmick or unnatural economic participation, I think that Refind is a great product on its own, which I've been using since its inception, and derive great value from, while also naturally contributing to. For me Refind is to web links and information what Product Hunt is to products and the future. Given that foundation, the addition of an eventual monetary or pecuniary incentive is less likely to be perverted since it aligns with existing self-satisfying and community-benefitting behaviors. In contrast, Steemit starts with perverse incentives (share content to make money) and then tries to promote productive or healthy behaviors as a second priority. Not that it couldn't, but I've never seen that model reach the necessary scale or healthy ecosystem in order to thrive and survive. I've also seen many decentralized social platforms attempt to provide more privacy-preserving or anti-establishment options against Twitter and Facebook only to find that — lacking their own locus of intrinsically motivated and diverse forms of participation — there simply wasn't enough cohesion to spin the generative flywheel of social cohesion. Thus, whether the Relevance Coin ultimately succeeds or not should not necessarily impact the ability for Refind to continue to thrive and provide value. The community is still relatively small, but the behavior of saving, sharing, and curating content is only becoming more essential in the digital media landscape, and if there is an ultimate internal currency within the ecosystem that rewards positive, productive, and reinforcing behaviors, there's a good chance that it could amplify and motivate lasting success.
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Hunter
@rossdcurrie @adithya it's a worthy question, but incomplete. Relevance Coins have no value today, and only have value if the entire thing works. So — there's very little reason to try to game the system today and engage in negative self-promotional activities. IOW, the arbitrage value is exceedingly low relative to a conventional ICO. I do share your concern that 'incentivizing in monetary terms' may diminish lasting intrinsic motivation to helpfully or healthily participate, but the value of a Relevance Coin (RN), today, and even tomorrow, is so specious, as to be practically negligible. To prove this statement: there is very little likelihood of liquidity for RNs any time soon, and so people who find value in Refind will continue to patronize the service as they have been, paying little heed to RNs. Those who come to Refind to earn RNs may be initially motivated, and so that might help them generate the initial "activation energy" required to give the service a go (since cold starts on any service are incredibly hard to motivate), in which case that may seduce those users into becoming proactive or healthy contributors (that's really up to @dominikg's growth funnel). Suffice it to say — the monetary value of RNs is so minimal today as to largely be a statement of intent about the future and how @dominikg intends to reward early adopters of his platform, and share any potential future success he may achieve. That's why I like this idea — there's very little risk for anyone, and upside for everyone (with a slight impact to the aggregation of wealth that @dominikg might *someday* earn if he sells or builds a self-sustaining ad business). Obviously this kind of thing won't work in a vacuum, and so I assume if there are abuses that @dominikg will necessarily crack down on them. There have been virtually currencies established in the past prior to the blockchain and they've worked... okay. But this is a different moment in time with different pressures at work in the broader ecosystem, and I'm all for this kind of experimentation, especially on a service that I've come to love so much.
Dominik Grolimund
Two years ago we started our journey here on Product Hunt. We've reached product-market fit, Refind is used by thousands of engaged users and it's growing. But now we want to accelerate growth, so we're making a big announcement today: we're giving away 1 billion coins to early users for free. At a later point, we'll buy them back with our profits. It's the world's first token-based referral and buyback program. We think it's a better alternative to ICOs for startups who are not looking for funding but who want to grow the network instead—millions of users instead of millions of dollars. Product Hunters are invited to join for the next three days and will get 20 coins to start (like if they were invited by another user). This also applies to Product Hunters who joined previously. After three days, we'll go back to invite-only. You can get more coins by inviting your friends (20 coins per signup). 1. Read the announcement: http://relevance.community?ref=p... 2. Sign up and get 20 coins: https://refind.com?ref=producthunt Thanks for your interest! I'll be around here and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dominikg) for questions all day.
Michael Musgrove
@dominikg This is a really imaginative idea. I've been using Refind and enjoying it for a while, and it just keeps getting better with the more people that get on board. Godspeed.
Dominik Grolimund
@mbmusgrove Releasing just now. Please try again in 2 minutes.
Dominik Grolimund
@mbmusgrove That's great to hear, thanks!
Dominik Grolimund
@mbmusgrove Does it work now?
Michael Musgrove
@dominikg I've never heard someone say that before about a 404 page, but you're welcome. I'm sure getting this set up with all the gears turning is a huge orchestration.
David Delahunty
Big fan of Refind and I can remember signing up when they first launched. To me, it seems natural to try to capitalise on the rise of Crypto and build it into the Refind product. Makes, even more, sense to me having just finished reading Hooked :). If you need an invite code, you can use mine: https://refind.com/Delahuntagram...
Dominik Grolimund
@delahuntagram Nir Eyal is on Refind too. You might want to follow him: https://refind.com/nireyal :)
Martijn de Kuijper
It's insane how fast @dominikg is pushing out new, high quality stuff. Really impressed again!
Helmi
I've been on Refind for quite a while now and am trying to convince people to use it for mostly the same while now. It's just an awesome product to use. After dipping my toes into blockchain technology too now for some months it's awesome to see @dominikg and his team go this route now. I'm so excited and am very curious to see how this is turning out While i'm quite sure it will be awesome. Good job, @dominikg – this should help you getting Refind to even more fame.
Dominik Grolimund
@helmi Thanks, also for all your help in the past!
Damien Van Achter
Well done @dominikg ! Really impressive and damned well played. Why not adding the possibility to mine "relevance coin" in javascript when someone read a link "refinded" ?
Dominik Grolimund
@davanac Thanks! We have some more ideas for the Relevance Coin. Stay tuned! :)
Arin Basu

I guess we will have to watch this space. The possibilities are endless and this is the first time a web service is linking the "linking" with "minting".

Pros:

By connecting "monetisation" possibilities with "content" relevance, this is an unprecedented mix: nothing like this exists at the moment.

Cons:

Yes, I think if they can allow coins for "minting" new & relevant information, rather than "give away", that would be great.

Erica Berger

Refind has powerful and good intentions.

Pros:

I helped come up with the term relevance in regards to content and to Refind, and believ the relevance economy will improve the web.

Cons:

Giving away coins is a new concept, so who knows!

Bjorn Larsen
You did what now?
Nick Frost
This is really exciting and I just realized that, as a user for the past 18 months, I have 145 coins already. If you need an invite code, you can use mine: ‪https://refind.com/thinker?invit...
Nick Frost
@dominikg I started a Relevance Coin subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Relevan...), btw. Thought it might be a good place for it to get more exposure and be a place for future discussions, content, etc.
Dominik Grolimund
@thinker Thanks! I'm new to Reddit though... What should I do? :)
Brad Brooks
I love Refind. It's excellent, and seemingly just gets better every day. I always find something new and fascinating every time I open a new tab, and I love sharing content I find interesting on there too. The relevance coins are a really exciting move, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the service grows over the next few years… 👏👏👏
Dominik Grolimund
@ninthart Thanks a lot, we appreciate this!
Stefan N.
Awesome addition to a really valuable tool. Would be great to have a solid „social relevancy“ algorithm for gems on the web backed by this incentive system.
Harold Cummington
I honestly don't get what the coins are for or what this product is. There's quite a lot of content on the website and it doesn't seem to be organized in a logical way.
Dominik Grolimund
@haroldcummingto The coins are our attempt to solve the cold start problem. The product is about discovering, saving, and reading links that are worth your attention. Does that help?
Nick Neuman
@dominikg Interesting use of tokens here. I've never heard of the platform, but I use Pocket all the time and am signed up for way too many newsletters, so this could be a great merging of both tools that I will definitely check out. I have a barrage of curiosity for you: - Will the tokens be used for incentivizing curators, or is it purely a reward for sharing the platform? - If I'm reading the website correctly, Refind will repurchase tokens based on market price, but will also have an unlimited option to repurchase tokens at $31 per token. How did you come up with that price? Seems like that will cap token value at $31, even if 10% of your profits exceed that $/token, as the underlying value in the tokens comes from your buyback promise. - Do you plan to add any publishing to Refind in the future, or is it strictly a discovery platform? - Finally, do you have a way of integrating the (many) weekly newsletters that people curate? Thanks!
Dominik Grolimund
@nneuman Thanks for your questions. - We're going to add more ways for active users get coins. Incentivizing curators is an idea, but incentives need to be designed very well. - I'm planning to write the back story at some point, and I might talk about the cap too (note that the cap at $31 is high, 1bn x 31$). - We do have a publisher's program (https://refind.com/publishers), but this is not to publish on Refind, but to use Refind for distribution. - Well, you could tune down on them if you used Refind. But what would you have in mind?
Nick Neuman
@dominikg Good point about 1bn x $31 🤔😁 As for the newsletters, I think your answer about using Refind for distribution may be the key. If people sent their newsletters through Refind and were "scored" based on the quality of their curation, possibly incentivized by tokens as you mentioned, it could allow people to more easily identify and cut out newsletters that aren't of high quality. Really, Refind makes the curation part of newsletters unnecessary anyway. The commentary can still be interesting at times though, which is the piece that would be good to fit in somehow. My answer isn't very concrete, sorry!
Nic Perry
@dominikg @nneuman I'm seeing the same thing, capping value at $31 seems to place an upper limit on how much what I add can create value for me. I would personally prefer seeing $31 as a lower limit, or market value. If this really takes off, I could see coins being worth well over $31, if there wasn't a threat of the company buying everyone's coins out. If I'm reading it right, I imagine it would create a soft cap at least a few dollars under, because the risk of buying at lets say $29 when it only has $2 of remaining potential value is no longer worth the risk. The market would probably grind to a stop around $30 with no one willing to buy any of the coins.
Dominik Grolimund
@nneuman Agree! Note that you can comment on links on Refind.
Nic Perry
@dominikg $31 is definitely high up front, but as you burn coins after buyback, I assume that will raise the value of the remaining coins, by the time you buy back 98% and there are only 2 million left, exceeding $62 million in coin value isn't out of the realm of reason is it?
Marshall Mazagwu
Pros: Really cool idea. Think Medium and Twitter News meets crypto. Cons: New's aggregation is a fairly crowded space. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something to keep in mind. Given that you also get free coins for joining, I'd say there's enough reason to give these guys a shot. Feel free to sign up with my invite for 20 free coins!
Joona Tuunanen
I've been using Refind since December 2015 and I can say that it's one of those apps/services that really makes my life better and easier. This is such an awesome and clever initiative by the good folks at Refind. If you've never tried it, this would be a great time :)
Dominik Grolimund
@iamjoona Thanks! Happy to hear that you use it since the start!
Tibor Martini
I‘m on refind since the early days and can‘t stop recommending refind to users. For me refind is a perfect hub to discover news and stories about web development, web design, all kinds of tech and news but whats really amazing is that you can train the feed to your very own interests. For me, Refind regularly outsmarts other news aggregators and serves me links I wouldn‘t have found on twitter, medium or facebook and helps me at the same time to organize and rediscover articles and tools. This seems to be a very interesting business model to me and I wish you much success! If you like to join 👉 https://refind.com/tibor?invite=...
Dominik Grolimund
@ungeruehrt Thanks a lot. Very happy to have you on board!
Eduard Ionuţ Ichim
Great idea to reward the early users of Refind just like Refind is based on a great idea! Keep up the good work!
Jason Pittam
News + Social + Relevance = a good mix. News + Social + Relevance + Incentives = a great mix! @dominikg, awesome job. In addition to their features, keeping users engaged is a strong point of Refind. To get in the mix, join here to get 20 coins.
Ken Cucchia
So I have to invite around 5 million people to attain those coins essentially?
Dominik Grolimund
@kcucchia :D It'd be 50m, but keep in mind that the invitee also gets 20 coins. Also, we're going to add more ways for active users to get coins. The system is designed so that the first 10m users get the coins (with early, active users holding the majority).
Kristin Huntley
Love this idea @dominikg! I forgot I was using Refind in beta, it works so well! Great work.