Solana Co-Founder's Favorite Use Case, How to Play Time.fun?

Original Article Title: "Time is Wealth: Time Tokenization Application on Base time.fun Explained"

Original Article Author: Karen, Foresight News

Editor's Note: The previously deployed Time.fun on the Base network has recently migrated to Solana. The founder had previously expressed that the Ethereum ecosystem only cares about technology and is self-righteous. This article was first published on June 20, 2024. Today, after migrating to Solana, with the support of the ecosystem founder and developers, it immediately attracted market attention.

February 25 Update: Today, Solana co-founder toly "joined" the time tokenization SocialFi app on time.fun. The token on time.fun, toly (toly's minutes), saw its market value briefly rise above $18 million within an hour and a half, with the token price reaching $187. Toly also replied to time.fun's tweet about the Meme token "toly's minutes" on Twitter, stating, "Business communication is my favorite use case for encryption."

Below is the original content:

Another SocialFi app on Base, time.fun, has emerged and attracted the attention of industry builders and KOLs such as @tier10k, WallStreetBets, Helius CEO @0xMert_, Icebergy, and The Block CEO Larry Cermak since its release.

So, how does this app, which tokenizes time in minutes, operate? Is there a plan to release a token? What are its future prospects? This article will introduce and discuss these questions.

What is time.fun?

time.fun was initially launched as circle.tech and received the favor of the Crypto accelerator Alliance in April of this year. From the outset, circle.tech's goal was to allow users to tokenize time, enabling creators to earn income while fans can interact with creators through payment for services such as consultations, group chats, or live streams.

At the end of last month, circle.tech rebranded to time.fun. This change was made to eliminate the liability risks associated with a similar name to Circle (the USDC issuer) and to better align with its concept of "time tokenization." The platform sets the value of time according to a bonding curve, providing creators with time-based income and offering a small portion of transaction fees to incentivize creators. Additionally, it empowers time holders to some extent.

The creator of time.fun, @0xKawz, stated that time.fun not only allows the tokenization of time but also supports deeper connections between creators and loyal fans, such as scheduling meetings and sending direct messages.

How does time.fun work?

On time.fun, users can create accounts using Google, Discord, Apple, or Twitter, but ultimately need to connect and verify their Twitter account. This ensures that the platform's traffic comes from an active social media ecosystem.

Web3Auth will then automatically generate a wallet for the user. Interaction requires recharging on Base to pay for Gas or time-related purchase and redemption fees.

The value of time on time.fun is dynamically adjusted based on market demand using a bonding curve pricing mechanism. After purchasing time, fans can redeem or deliver time to schedule meetings with creators, with the minimum redemption time being 15 minutes. Additionally, fans can send direct messages to creators at a cost of 1 minute per message, and creators are required to respond within 5 days.

To further enhance interaction between creators and fans, time.fun also offers exclusive group chat functionality supported by a Telegram bot. Creators can authorize the bot to manage group members, facilitating automated member invitations and removals.

Regarding the original fee model of circle.tech, users referred by creators received a 1% referral fee, circle.tech charged a 5% consultation application fee, and the remaining 94% was distributed to creators who received consultations or chats.

After the rebranding, time.fun updated its fee model to focus more on creators' time delivery and empowering time holders. It also drives time value speculation by allocating a small portion of time transaction fees to creators, thereby enhancing platform activity.

Creators earn ETH in three ways: when fans transact your time, when fans redeem time (i.e., chat, meetings, etc.), and through referrals. Among these, transaction earnings account for up to 2.1%, referral user earnings for 0.5%, and notably, redemption-related earnings constitute up to 95%, incentivizing creators to create more value for their fans.

In addition, a portion of the transaction and redemption fees goes to the Timeholder Fund. According to time.fun, Timeholders can also benefit from the Timeholder Fund, which can receive up to 2% of the transaction and redemption volume. Creators can choose appropriate ways to use this fund, such as gifting it to fans.

Will time.fun Issue a Token?

The original document from circle.tech indicates that users of the circle.tech application can earn points, which will be considered for future airdrops and giveaways. Activities such as creating an account, asking questions, answering questions, participating in one-on-one chat rooms, etc., will earn reward points.

@0xKawz, the creator of time.fun, stated on Discord, "A snapshot of the circle.tech points activity has been taken. However, now is not a good time for an airdrop. Circle.tech has performed poorly in terms of fees and attracting genuinely stable users, and hopes to bring in more usage through time.fun. Still planning to airdrop this summer, a fixed ratio of tokens will be distributed to users (old product and new product users)."

In the roadmap of time.fun, the time.fun contract will be scalable, with more products based on minutes as the base currency set to be released. Other projects can build on top of time.fun once they are listed on the whitelist. Additionally, TIME airdrops can also be earned in the 1st quarter.

What Is the Future of time.fun?

Indeed, the concept of tokenizing time is not novel. In 2022, Aave's experimental arm, Newt, delivered the first time tokenization project, Aika, which allowed time to be minted as an NFT and sold on Polygon. At the time, Newt viewed Aika as a standardized way for guilds, service DAOs, and other crypto-native entities to pay rewards for services rendered. However, Aika only allowed creators to receive rewards after delivering the time, making it challenging to attract creators. The project eventually fizzled out.

Recently, the orb.land, praised by Vitalik Buterin as cool, imposed a limitation where a creator could only issue one Orb NFT and introduced a Harberger Tax system to restrict holding and reselling commitments NFTs, encouraging high-quality interaction between creators and holders, as well as promoting efficient allocation of resources. The idea is good, but there is minimal demand from creators and ordinary players, as no transactions mean no earnings for creators.

In comparison, time.fun has a better incentive mechanism, where creators not only receive a split from time exchanges but also earn a small portion of the profits from secondary time speculation trading. This setup drives them to expand their influence, attract more fans, and increase platform engagement. At the same time, regular users or fans can also benefit from the Time Holder Fund.

Whether time.fun can kickstart a flywheel for creator fees remains to be seen. After all, at this stage, users are more focused on speculation rather than real value, and a creator's time value seems to be merely users speculating on the creator's popularity.

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