The Interledger Community 🌱: Patrick Rahy

Some thoughts on PIX - the biggest financial revolution ever

Patrick Rahy — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 13:47:45 +0000

Hello everyone! I'm sharing an interesting paper about PIX and its lessons on financial inclusion. The document the author shared with the post also demonstrates some of the infrastructure, payment flows, and other aspects of such an amazing technology.

PIX is an open payment method created by the Brazilian government that allows people to transfer any amount from 0,01 BRL between each other instantly, without fees. Brazilians moved 11 trillions BRL in 2022, saving billions in bank fees, which makes PIX the biggest payment revolution ever. PIX gives power to the people, by offering liquidity without charges.

I believe there are many learnings we could take from this experience, even though PIX only has 2 years old. As an open-source technology, PIX also allows anyone to create different solutions with it, like digital wallets integrated to businesses. In many ways, PIX can lead the way to a cross-border payment method that guarantees financial inclusion worldwide.

Click here to see the post and document attached

Kult's ILP Open-Source Digital Wallet — Final Grant Report #2

Patrick Rahy — Wed, 03 May 2023 11:16:07 +0000

Image/Banner

Project Update

Hello Community! How are you folks doing? :)

You already know that Kult is the best content-sharing platform for culture lovers (movies, TV shows, books, songs, and podcasts). But if you didn't know yet, Kult's team is also developing an ILP-based open-source digital wallet with 1 goal: connecting ILP with PIX through a seamless payment method that will allow people to send and receive money instantly in Brazil (PIX is a free and instant payment method by Brazilian Government).

So for the current ILP financial solution Grant, we committed basically to 2 main deliverables:

1) Technical Documentation of the Digital Wallet

As explained in our mid report, in order to develop the digital wallet connecting ILP and PIX, we first needed to understand (i) the regulatory requirements of digital wallets in Brazil, (ii) technical requirements and technology to be used, (iii) necessary team, (iv) partners and related costs, and (v) userflow when sending/receiving the payment since the UX is paramount to increase participation and accessibility.

We managed to deliver in our mid report the documentation in 4 parts, and we are feeling confident and proud about it!

Although the costs seemed scary at first, we managed to negotiate it with some partners, and reached a viable implementation cost at the end of the day. The thing is: for the money to leave the sender and reach the end user with PIX in a fast manner, we need to involve some partners, each one with a different cost of set-up, and sometimes per transaction as well. We also need partners to comply with the regulatory requirements in Brazil.

The total set-up cost now is about 7.6k USD, and the cost per transaction will vary according to the currency and partner we use. However, we can already say it is viable and possible for the prototyping phase!

The needed time and fees for third parties/consultants must be studied further since it requires a deeper consultation with some of the providers, like AFVP. They have already worked with us through Alfredo Luz to develop the technical document, and they are open to continuing the partnership with special fees.

We will have the complete timeline and budget specifications by the time we apply for phase 2 since it will require a deeper analysis.

2) Kult's Business Plan using the technology

We did a thorough study about Web 3 platforms and new ways to monetize people online. For those who are not familiar with Web 3: basically, it is a new era of the internet, in which decentralization rules. We want to put our Community first, and the business model, of course, is based on that. So our goal is to monetize human curation of content. Amidst endless content, we must reward people who help us discover amazing content online, instead of relying solely on algorithms.

When we implemented the Web Monetization technology during the Grant for the Web program, we realize that, although highly promising, it had too many barriers. This was the spark that originated the idea of the digital wallet with the mission of making the Interledger Protocol more accessible and smooth for every platform and person to use.

The initial strategy, once the digital wallet is ready, is to make it easy for users to: (i) donate/tip to each other, (ii) charge for exclusive galleries, (iii) buy and sell digital content, and (iv) receive money through an ad-revenue sharing system.

It must be said, again, that the goal is not to create a digital wallet for Kult. The goal is to develop an open-source digital wallet that any platform can use, and that makes it easy for any people to send and receive money worldwide.

We know that it is a long way to get there, but we also know we are on the right track!

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

As said above, we managed to deliver the main objectives of the program (technical document to implement the digital wallet and business plan). However, 1 thing is still missing: we failed to implement the Acessibe.com tool, which gives the website the necessary tools to increase accessibility. The reason is that our website is not compatible with their platform. So we are pivoting to another solution and it is taking more time than we expected :(

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

Our initial target market is the Brazilian public with the following characteristics:

Consumers of movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, and music;
Dissatisfied with current networks;
Seeking to interact about content and discover new things;
Cultural producers, creators, and curators;
Diversity of voices is key.

There is no limitation or segmentation regarding age, gender, social class, etc, although we are targeting first the Brazilian market. We understand that there is no culture without diversity, therefore we are firm in our strategy of communicating to these groups, and having a diverse team on Kult.

As Brazilians, we feel like culture is always under attack, and it got even worse in the last 8 years or so. Many cultural programs and public grants were attacked and shut down during this time. Nonetheless, current social media business model is causing a huge negative impact in Brazil, maybe even irreversible, by spreading misinformation, fake news, hatred, and shaking democracy in a way never seen before.

Actually, our co-founder Patrick wrote his Master's thesis about this exact topic in 2022.

Kult's mission is to leverage culture by creating a safe space, free of misinformation, fake news, hatred, and data exploitation. Instead, we offer a new business model, connecting 2 revolutionary payment technologies (ILP and PIX) to allow people to monetize each other seamlessly.

Policies of Product

Kult has a very strong policy on intolerance of bigots. That is, unlike current social media, we will not be complacent with hate speech, fake news, and manipulation. Nor will we violate people's privacy and sensitive personal data, as competing networks have been doing. We wrote our Terms and Conditions and our Privacy Policy exactly in this sense.

Communications and Marketing

The main marketing strategies we have been carrying out are listed below:

During the Grant for the Web program, we invested some of the budget on these marketing strategies, always focusing on diverse voices that could bring different groups to Kult. They remain with us until nowadays.

We didn't add marketing in our budget this time, but we think it might be important for the next phase.

What’s Next?

The next job to be done is applying for the phase 2 of ILP financial services Grant. We feel prepared and confident about it, and we will start working on our application right away.

Community Support

We had good conversations with @jasperv during the Grant period, looking for ways that AgnostiPay and Kult could work together in the near future. We also see Rafiki as a potential partner for the prototyping phase, but we need to deepen our study.

Additional Comments

That's all, folks! See you in phase 2! (hopefully xD)

Relevant Links/Resources

Reach out directly to us:
patrick@kult.pt

Website:
www.kult.com.br

Social links:
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/kultsocial/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kult_app/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/kult_app/

Patrick — ILP Summit Reflections

Patrick Rahy — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 15:21:58 +0000

Introduction

Hi all! I'm Patrick, from Kult. It was a pleasure meeting some of you in person during the ILP Summit and seeing how this community is open, accessible, diverse, and eager to learn with each other.

I have to say, I still don't know if the weekend gave me more friends or learnings xD

Key highlights about your participation at the Summit

First of all, the connection with the community was really remarkable. Something that made me feel really happy and proud was seeing so many diverse people coming together, sharing experiences, laughs, learnings, and good moments.

When showing Kult to you folks, I received a lot of powerful feedbacks and insights. I discovered, for instance, that there is an Indian version of Kult, called Bingeit! It was surprising and funny finding out that 2 people had the same idea in opposite sides of the planet. We exchanged ideas, experiences, problems, and we both left with the certainty that we are in the right path.

With Agnostipay, SnakeNation, People's Clearinghouse, Beats by Girlz, and others, I found friends and potential partners for the future. Thanks guys for the amazing time together!

It was also special to see a lot of people interested in our proposal to connect ILP to PIX. That gave us an extra clarity of being on the right path (oh, and we will come back with news about this soon ;D)

Key takeaways from the Summit

One of the most important takeaways for me was watching former USAID Chief Diversity Officer Erin Brown's speech about the 5 P's of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Policies, Practices, Programs, Partnerships, and Public Accountability - if I got it right, there is an extra P, which is People.

DEI requires more than words. It requires action through processes, strategies, and planning. And it is paramount for every organization in today's world, mainly to promote greater financial equity and inclusion.

Seeing in person how different projects are working to make this possible is inspiring.

The ILP Summit 2022 was unforgettable and I'm looking forward to meet you all again in 2023!

Kult — Grant Report #2

Patrick Rahy — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 12:51:00 +0000

Project Update

Hello folks! We are glad to share with the Community Kult's Final report. It was a fun and challenging journey, and we enjoyed every second of it!

Progress on objectives

Since the Interim Report, we delivered new important features:

Internationalization: Kult is now an international platform as it can be used by anyone in English or Portuguese – the app/website will automatically use your preferred language. This is an important step to bring more people to our community and it was one of our milestones as Grantees.
Accessibility improvements: we added alt text to images and buttons, making Kult more accessible for people with disabilities. We also created a keyboard shortcut (press "A" to open it) for every interaction on Kult (image below). Now it is possible to navigate Kult using only the keyboard, which is a major accessibility milestone.

One of the most awaited features was the Web Monetized galleries, which we also delivered recently! Now it is possible to support specific galleries of human curated content to show appreciation and support. In the images below, we can see a gallery entitled "Combating racial discrimination", created by Kult's profile, that is already receiving people's support through Web Monetization - link: https://kult.com.br/u/5f074c9b22bc31173a5dbe0b/g/61169448494f601d4f5fab56

We also delivered in the last months, among other improvements: (i) spoiler alert on posts; (ii) replying to comments on posts, making it possible for people to create more engaging conversations inside Kult; (iii) new influencers and partners, mainly from minority groups, bringing their communities to Kult.

With such news, we are delighted to inform that we delivered around 95% of the initial milestones, as we are going to see below:

Proposed features and status:

Illustrated landing page presenting Kult: Done (https://kult.com.br/login)
Hiring Marketing team: Done
Discussion forums/comments inside content: Done (https://kult.com.br/c/6135f06d03e9416d84e9597b?source=6241c06a46becc0e100b7663)
"Discover" page: Done (https://kult.com.br/s)
Collaborative galleries (evolved into "Communities"): Done (https://kult.com.br/k)
Increasing accessibility: Done
Internationalization: Done
Guest Blogging: Done (example: https://seriemaniacos.tv/como-escolher-as-melhores-series-sem-depender-do-algoritmo/)
Paid partnerships with curators and creators: Done
Where to watch content and read book previews: Done ("where to watch"/"read preview" button inside content)
Feedback page to gather people's opinions: Done (https://kult.com.br/feedback)
Adding books: Done
At least 50 influencers using Kult: Done
Asking friends for recommendations: Done
Audio transcription service: Failed for technical infeasibility
Distributing US$ 5 to be spent on Kult: Cancelled because of budget reallocation needs

Traction/growth KPIs (July 2022):

- 5254 registered users (we started the GFTW with 200, reached 2170 in March 2022)
- 1417 monthly active users (788 in March, goal was 1000 by the end of the Grant)
- 16771 content recommendations (8251 in March 2022)
- 26 Communities (top 3 have 586, 417, and 317 members)

Monetization with WM:

Donations to Curators and Creators while scrolling the feed: Done (https://kult.com.br/d)
Audio monetization: Cancelled (Spotify's new Terms do not allow)
Monetizing personal galleries: Done (https://kult.com.br/u/5f074c9b22bc31173a5dbe0b)
Monetizing Communities: Ongoing (prototype: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jYPOOsUePJG9rIEDzyrn9sxL0VY6Xhi-?usp=sharing)
4 curators monetized
Total of USD 0,21 transactioned through Kult
Total of USD 47,32 received by curators from Interledger Network

Comparing the final numbers with what we committed to do, we share our final conclusions:

We overachieved our goals when it comes to monthly active users, total registered users, and content recommendations;
Despite a few changes along the way, the Milestones were in the vast majority successfully delivered;
The Web Monetization tool, although highly promising, has significant barriers to new adopters, as explained in our Interim Report (we will deepen into it again later in this Report). We believe that was a critical factor which affected the amount of money transferred within Kult – confirmed by people's feedbacks.

Key activities

Platform: Kult proved to be a beloved community for people who want to discover, share, and organize movies, TV series, books, podcasts, and songs online. GFTW was essential to validate the initial idea, and evidently to improve it with several new features, as mentioned above. We also launched the Android and iOS app, besides the websites kult.pt and kult.com.br.
Monetization: We managed to prove that human curation can and should be monetized. Despite significant barriers, Web Monetization has a huge potential to reward people for helping others to find amazing content amid endless options, while also organizing them in customizable and monetized galleries (as seen above).
Communities: Since Kult launched its new Community feature, it has been thrilling to watch people exchanging knowledge, information, and curiosities about niche content. Communities are growing in a daily basis and the top 3 have already reached 586, 417, and 317 members!
Influencers/curators/creators: We also managed to gather several culture influencers/curators/creators, mostly from minority groups, giving them voice and power to leverage content they value. Now they are engaging with their Community on Kult, by exchanging cultural tips and suggestions everyday.
Open code and licensing: Kult's code is open and accessible to all (https://gitlab.com/phablulo/kult). All content and information shared on Kult is licensed as Creative Commons 4.0.

Communications and marketing

Through all of Kult’s communication channels, we highlight diversity, inclusion, openness, tolerance, and love. We have spread the word of Web Monetization in several channels:

Podcast "Versão Beta": https://kult.com.br/c/61117f48494f601d4f5fa573 (about human curation and how Kult aims to monetize it using WM)
Podcast "Eaí, assistiu?": https://kult.com.br/c/621638ea2115874b91b01b02 (about the growing influence of algorithms over what we consume and how human curation is a better way to discover good content)
Meios & Publicidade Magazine (2 articles): https://www.meiosepublicidade.pt/registo/?id=262602&pgm=
Interruptor online event (@ruteradio): discussing micropayments with another Grantee and presenting Kult's way of monetizing curators with Web Monetization
UPTEC website: https://escoladestartups.org/kult-recebe-investimento-de-quase-100-mil-euros/
University of Porto website: https://noticias.up.pt/mestrado-na-feup-inspirou-patrick-rahy-a-fundar-duas-empresas/
Websummit Lisbon 2021 participation, in which Patrick spoke about the Future of Content in one of the stages, highlighting how Web Monetization could be interesting to monetize curators of content online.
Social medias: https://www.instagram.com/kult.com.br/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/kultsocial, https://twitter.com/kult_com_br?s=20&t=MPN6f3P_4dQDeE16q0iThA
Communication about Web Monetization on Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb75fF5stfC/ and https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6867468462906765313

All the Marketing/Communication budget was conducted by a team composed of minorities. With very clear guidelines of tolerance, respect, diversity, and inclusion, we managed to gather a diverse team of cultural curators and influencers to communicate about Kult & Web Monetization.

What’s next?

During the GFTW experience, we saw in first person how WM is a great tool with amazing potential to monetize curators and creators online, but several barriers are preventing such potential to be unleashed.

That's why we spent the last months understanding and envisioning how we could work to help this technology become more accessible, mainly for our Brazilian Community. The final conclusion is that we could develop a native technology within Kult - a digital wallet - which can intermediate payments between people who want to donate and pay real money to content curators and creators.

So we were thrilled to find out about ILP-based financial solutions Grant opportunity. We believe that an ILP digital wallet could solve a significant part of the current barriers people have in order to adopt Web Monetization as an habitual tool. Therefore, our first step after the end of GFTW period was to apply for the new Grant opportunity.

In summary, what we propose is an open source ILP-based digital wallet that provides a smooth and simple UX to allow for payments between people in any website. On the other hand, we propose to connect such payment solution to PIX (a public, free, and digital payment solution created by Central Bank of Brazil), making it possible for our Brazilian public to easily receive the money in Brazilian territory.

What community support would benefit your project?

Cultural communities in general would be very useful inside Kult. Now that we have Communities' feature available on Kult, we want to bring people from other social networks to experience the cultural exchange on Kult.

Another essential support is sharing ways to diminish some barriers that WM have. We already identified possible paths to eliminate barriers and leverage WM potential, but of course, the more information we have, the better.

Additional comments

As a final note, we would like to send our love to Web Monetization and Interledger Community. We can feel the amazing energy of people working hard to make the impossible, possible. We strongly believe that ILP will be in the center of the new generation of internet, bringing possibilities to evolve today's ways of monetization – which are not sustainable on the long term.

Interledger/Web Monetization has a huge potential to be spread across the globe, and we are proud to be a part of it. Regardless of what the future holds, we are glad to say that we did our best to contribute to this lovely revolution.

With Love,
Patrick, Helena, Phablulo, Diogo (Kult's team)

Kult — Grant Report #1

Patrick Rahy — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:00:20 +0000

Hello guys! We’re happy to share with you Kult's Interim Report. The Grant kicked off for us on June 2021, and it will last until June 2022 (we requested a no-cost extension to have more time to accomplish our initial goals). And this cover image is the team of founders Patrick, Helena, Diogo and Phablulo in Websummit Lisbon, November 2021 :D

Project Update

We had several improvements during the funded period. It is not unfair to say that Kult is a completely different platform, now that we are heading to the end of the Grant period. However, we also had some setbacks, as any startup is supposed to.

Looking back, we consider that our biggest win so far was to achieve the initial purpose of Kult: building a community of thousands of culture-lovers, debating and sharing cultural content online, while monetizing human curation without ads. The Kult community proved that it is way better to discover content with real people, instead of letting algorithms tell us what to watch/listen/read. As a struggle, we can say it was complicated to popularize the Web Monetization technology. Our main users are Portuguese speakers (Brazilian and Portuguese) and they faced barriers to adopt the WM feature, as we are going to see later on this report.

Progress on objectives

Proposed features and status:

Illustrated landing page presenting Kult: Done (https://kult.com.br/login)
Hiring Social Media agency: Done
Discussion forums/comments inside content: Done (https://kult.com.br/c/6135f06d03e9416d84e9597b?source=6241c06a46becc0e100b7663)
"Discover people" page: Done (https://kult.com.br/s)
Collaborative galleries: Done (https://kult.com.br/k)
Increasing accessibility: Postponed (next few months)
Internationalization: Postponed (next few months)
Guest Blogging: Postponed (next few months)
Paid partnerships with curators and creators: Ongoing
Where to watch: Done
Feedback page to hear users: Done (https://kult.com.br/feedback)
Adding books: Done
At least 50 influencers using Kult: Done
Audio transcription service: Cancelled
Distributing US$ 5 to be spent on Kult: Cancelled
Asking friends for recommendations: Done

Traction/growth KPIs (March 2022):

2170 registered users (we started the Grant with only 200)
788 monthly active users (goal: 1000 until June 30, 2022)
8251 content recommendations

Monetization with WM:

Donations to Curators and Creators: Done (https://kult.com.br/d)
Audio monetization: Cancelled (Spotify's new Terms do not allow)
Monetizing personal galleries: Ongoing (prototype: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11ryqmhbwAvYjeFEawBO_Bhy8eDqFadjO?usp=sharing)
Monetizing Communities: Ongoing (prototype: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jYPOOsUePJG9rIEDzyrn9sxL0VY6Xhi-?usp=sharing)
4 curators monetized
Total of USD 0,15 transactioned inside the platform
Total of USD 32,56 received by curators from Interledger Network

Key activities

Platform: Kult proved to be a very loved community for people who want to discover, share, and organize movies, TV series, books, podcasts, and songs online. GFTW was essential to validate the initial idea, and of course improve it with several new features as mentioned above. Also, we launched the Android app, and soon the iOS app will be available.
Monetization: We managed to prove that human curation can and should be monetized. Despite some barriers, Web Monetization has a huge potential to reward people for helping others to find amazing content amid endless options, and also organizing them in customizable galleries, which will be soon available for monetization (see prototype).
Communities: Since Kult launched its new Community feature, it has been thrilling to watch people exchanging knowledge, information, and curiosities about niche content.
Influencers/curators/creators: We also managed to gather several culture influencers/curators/creators, mostly from minority groups, giving them voice and power to leverage content they value.
Open code and licensing: Kult's code is open and accessible to all (https://gitlab.com/phablulo/kult). All content and information shared on Kult is licensed as Creative Commons 4.0.

Communications and marketing

In all of Kult’s communication channels, we highlight diversity, inclusion, openness, tolerance, and love. We have spread the word of Web Monetization in several channels:

Podcast "Versão Beta": https://kult.com.br/c/61117f48494f601d4f5fa573 (about human curation and how Kult aims to monetize it using WM)
Podcast "Eaí, assistiu?": https://kult.com.br/c/621638ea2115874b91b01b02 (about the growing influence of algorithms over what we consume and how human curation is a better way to discover good content)
Meios & Publicidade Magazine (2 articles): https://www.meiosepublicidade.pt/registo/?id=262602&pgm=
Interruptor online event (@ruteradio): discussing micropayments with another Grantee and presenting Kult's way of monetizing curators with Web Monetization
UPTEC website: https://escoladestartups.org/kult-recebe-investimento-de-quase-100-mil-euros/
University of Porto website: https://noticias.up.pt/mestrado-na-feup-inspirou-patrick-rahy-a-fundar-duas-empresas/
Websummit Lisbon 2021 participation (see picture), in which Patrick spoke about the Future of Content in one of the stages, highlighting how Web Monetization could be interesting to monetize curators of content online.
Social medias: https://www.instagram.com/kult.com.br/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/kultsocial, https://twitter.com/kult_com_br?s=20&t=MPN6f3P_4dQDeE16q0iThA

We spent less than half of the marketing budget so far, as we were waiting the platform to reach all the main features users want, as well as the Android and iOS apps (Android is on but Apple is still reviewing it). The main investment was made on cultural influencers, prioritizing minority voices, to bring their followers to Kult.

What’s next?

Remaining features (internationalization, accessibility, Guest Blog).
Monetizing Galleries: see prototype link.
Bringing groups of content recommendation from other social networks to experience Communities on Kult.
New partners (cultural influencers from minority groups).
Reapply to Grant aiming to improve the WM technology and diminish the existing barriers, making it available for more people.

What community support would benefit your project?

Cultural communities in general would be very useful on Kult. Now that we have Communities available on Kult, we want to bring people from other social networks to experience the cultural exchange on Kult. However, there is the language barrier (only Portuguese) that we are working to eliminate, by adding English and Spanish language options.
Sharing ways to diminish some barriers that WM have.

Additional comments

Working with the Grant community and using Web Monetization to be the first platform to reward content curators on the web has been an insightful journey. There is a lot of potential in this technology, but to achieve this potential it is paramount to reduce the several frictions users have today. When we implemented the donation via WM, we explained step by step how users could monetize curation on Kult. The feedback we received from users is clear: there are too many steps and most of them are unrealistic for Brazilian users: first they have to create an account on Coil, which is available only in English; then they need an international credit card to pay 5 USD/month + taxes (which in Brazil is a considerable amount of money); downloading the Coil browser extension, logging in, then returning to Kult; once on Kult, you can start supporting curators, however if you want to receive the donations you must create an Uphold account, then return to Kult and paste the address of the wallet. The experience is expensive and intermittent, especially for non tech-savvy people.

The ideal way to solve these issues would be to develop the technology so it could be natively implemented on Kult, this is, you could donate, create a digital wallet, and receive money without having to leave Kult. In this possible scenario, the technology would still be used, but we would manage to implement the monetization 100% inside of Kult, creating a frictionless UX and leveraging Web Monetization experience.

Kult at Websummit Lisbon 2021

Patrick Rahy — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 15:36:41 +0000

Kult at Websummit Lisbon 2021

Hello everyone! :)

Last week, our team represented Kult as an Alpha Startup in one of the biggest technology and innovation conferences in the world, Web Summit 🚀

During the 4 days of the event, we were focused on networking, improving visibility and expanding Kult's horizons as a brand, startup, and product. It was an honor to be part of such an incredible event, full of relevant talks, diversified content and precious knowledge from global leaders across the market.

On Wednesday, we were able to share Kult's vision and product solution during the talk about the Future of Content, on the Startup Showcase's stage, presented by our team leader Patrick Rahy. He spoke about how Web Monetization can be a disruptive tool to monetize content creators and curators with peer-to-peer micropayments.

We also had our own exhibition stand on Thursday, during the whole day, where we met so many interesting people from around the world and brought new users for our platform.

Some key takeaways from the event that instigated us and that might interest you:

Facebook’s new brand name, Meta. It was one of the main topics in the event. Some people in favor. Most people against. There’s a lot of controversy about this. But maybe the main question to ask is: should one company have so much influence in dictating the future of technology and human interactions?

Reddit’s exponential growth of trusted and authentic communities around the globe, tackling issues reflected in society. Privacy is a central value to how it operates. Community moderators are valued and empowered.

NFT’s, crypto, blockchain… Is it a temporary trend or the future of digital? How can NFT be applied to different areas of society?

Important words from the CEO of Neeva (and former Google-exec), a no ad-monetization search engine:

“Ad monetization is based on competition… Ads represent a fundamental conflict of interest, they’re serving advertisers and not users. If it’s the only revenue source, it becomes worse and worse for users…”

We couldn’t agree more.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Kult's Web Monetization is on!

Patrick Rahy — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 19:07:03 +0000

We are glad to share with the community that Kult is now allowing peer-to-peer micropayments using WM! This is such a great milestone for us and we want to share our initial thoughts with you :)

First of all, how does it work?

Our initial idea was to allow donations of specific micro amounts between people. However, as we recently found out, this is not possible yet. Therefore, we thought of a new idea to make it possible for people to transfer money between each other spontaneously. It works like this: one can choose to support other people on Kult, by clicking on the "support" button in their profiles. If the person clicks on the button, a window pops up explaining how Web Monetization works and the way to get there (by connecting with Coil provider).

From the moment you choose to support someone, everytime you see their posts on your feed, or when you're browsing his/her profile and galleries, you will be transferring tiny amounts of money (0,36 USD/hour).

We also created a personalized page where you can follow your donations transactions, who you support and who supports you.

What are the pre-requisites?

To be able to give donations, you need to have a paid Coil subscription and the downloaded browser extension. It’s only supposed to work on the Desktop for now.

To be able to receive donations, you need to connect your profile to a digital wallet (which is what we are working on currently, to be able to associate your profile with Uphold’s digital wallet).

Next steps and challenges

Understanding how this user flow can become more simple inside our website, and specifically for our public, which lives in Brazil and Europe, is our biggest challenge. We understand that currently the barriers for using Web Monetization are pretty high, since there are many steps and integrations that need to be included, and also with Coil we can only make payments in USD.

This is fresh news and we will keep you posted on our next developments. If anyone has been working on a similar idea or has thoughts to share, please feel free to do so! We are happy to have a conversation about it. :)

(Our website is only in Portuguese for now, but hopefully through our explanation here and print screens you can understand how the user flow works!)

[HELP] Donations/tips using Web Monetization

Patrick Rahy — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 18:13:18 +0000

Hello everyone! 👋🏽

We are implementing donations (tips) via Web Monetization on Kult and we could use some help 😁

If someone already did something like this and wants to share some thoughts, please don’t be shy 🙈🙏🏽

Thank’s in advance and have a good week 🥰

Kult — Project Update #2

Patrick Rahy — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 16:55:09 +0000

Hello Web Monetization Community :)

We are glad to share the latest updates on Kult. Check it out!

** PRODUCT UPDATES (August)

1) Where to watch? Using JustWatch (https://www.justwatch.com/) free API, Kult has now the long awaited feature to check in which streaming services the user can find that content, with a deeplink taking the user directly to watch it.

2) What’s trending? Our new discover page (https://kult.com.br/s) offers a whole new world to users. Now you can see which people and contents are trending on Kult, and also search for them.

3) Reading changes the world! Kult has now millions of books via Google Books free API, and people are loving it (https://kult.com.br/c/612be19c75a6a31becb8f94a) ! It was one of the most requested features. It is also possible to read the free preview (https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2ZqZDwAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PP1&hl=&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_api) of the book before buying it.

4) Kult 🤝 Design: We are constantly revisiting our UX/UI. We have done several design improvements during August, but you’ll have to access Kult to see it with your own eyes 👁️👁️

These new features have been very well received by people - feedbacks and KPIs prove that the number of sessions per user and time spent on the platform have grown. The average per user is 12 minutes/session.

WHAT’S NEXT (September)

As part of our funding, we are aiming to monetize Kult with micropayments between people. The first step of monetization will start on September:

1) Monetization: People will be able to donate micropayments, starting with 0,001 USD, to content creators and curators they love. The second step of monetization will be to allow monetized galleries.

2) Retention: Improving e-mail marketing and notifications to remember users to return. We understand that we have to reinforce the habit of using Kult, which is a challenge for any social network.

3) Social login: Using Google and Facebook login, we can ease the access to Kult and facilitate the network effect, using “find friends” feature.

There’s a lot to do and we’re looking forward to coming back with amazing updates for our next contact.

That’s all folks! Thank you very much for keeping up with us. Let’s get to work! 💪🏽

See you soon,
Patrick

Kult — Project Update #1

Patrick Rahy — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 17:00:34 +0000

Hello everyone, how is it going? We are Kult (https://kult.com.br) : a place to discover content curated by culture lovers. It is also your personal library to save and organize movies, TV series, podcasts, music, and soon books.

We are 4 passionate young enterpreneurs, from Brazil and Portugal, who realized that the current social networks do not provide a healthy exchange about cultural content. With that in mind, we decided to create an alternative platform to gather all kinds of content and facilitate cultural discovery and exchange.

Project Update

In the first 50 days of Grant, we have improved a lot. Some of the news are: (i) a landing page to explain how Kult works, our values, team and partners (https://kult.com.br/login), (ii) a new feature that allows the user to ask friends for content recommendation, like this example https://kult.com.br/r/60f6f517fa059e506dab09f7, (iii) implementation of comments as discussion forums to make it possible for users to debate about content.

These new features have leveraged our monthly active users from 205 in early June to 361 as we write this. We were expecting 300 MAU until the end of August, so this is good news!
The bad news is that we had to postpone 2 features: (i) English and Spanish languages, and (ii) accessibility improvements. We understand the importance of these features, however, they ended up being more complicated than we initially thought. Therefore, they will be implemented within the next months.

Progress on objectives

In some aspects (new features and MAUs) we are ahead of our initial objective. However, we had to postpone 2 features due to their complexity, as explained above. They were moved from Month 1 to Month 3.

Key activities

Our Key Activities are (i) the development of the platform, building a product that people love and find valuable (and for that purpose we hired +1 full stack developer at the beginning of the Grant), and (ii) marketing/communications to improve our platform’s awareness, which currently resumes to friends & close community. This includes advocating for our disruptive business model using Web Monetization technology.

Communications and marketing

Communications and marketing are paramount for us, and we have a lot of news in this subject to share with you. The first one is our new landing page, mentioned earlier, that has beautiful illustrations from our friend and talented artist Helena Nemec (helenanemec.com). Next, Kult and Interruptor (another fellow Portuguese project participating in the GFTW) were interviewed by Meios & Publicidade, a renowned Portuguese media magazine (https://www.meiosepublicidade.pt/registo/?id=262602&pgm=), where we specifically talked about the use of Web Monetization to test and develop our micropayment business model.

Additionally, we hired a digital marketing agency to take care of our communications on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn – which is already paying off and creating more connection with our public. We are gradually introducing the topic of micropayment technology to our followers, as we understand it is a complex theme which involves many details unknown to most non-tech people.

From October on, we are going to kick off our marketing plan to spread Kult more widely. This is when we are starting our monetization plan as well. Until then, we are laying the grounds for what is yet to come, improving our platform’s UX/UI and online brand awareness.

What’s next?

Within the next month, we plan to add several new features: (i) a new page to discover people and content, (ii) displaying in which streaming platform that content is available, (iii) following galleries, and (iv) creating our own Blog with original articles as well as guest posts, to increase leads to our website.

What community support would benefit your project?

We would appreciate it a lot if you would access kult.com.br to get to know our platform and give any feedbacks you might have.

We understand that this is not 100% accessible for most people here, as we don't have yet any language besides Portuguese. However, you can still discover and share content on Kult, since our platform has literally every content available on TMDb.org and Spotify.

Additional comments

Thank you for reading this! See you soon and good work for all :)

Kult says: Hello World!

Patrick Rahy — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 19:20:36 +0000

Hello everyone! Hope this message finds you well : )

My name is Patrick, from Kult, a social platform for culture & entertainment content curation – a space to share and discover movies, TV series, music, podcasts (and soon books) with a passionate community. It is also a personal library to save and organize content digitally. Check us out on https://kult.pt/
(only Portuguese language for now, but we are working to provide English and Spanish soon).

We are based in Porto. Our team is made of 5 young passionate entrepreneurs, from Brazil and Portugal. We have applied to Grant for the Web in the first round and now again in the second round.

After months of incubation in UPTEC (Portugal), while participating in Startup Voucher Program, we aim to develop a new business model – different from the current social media –, and Web Monetization is a strong fit to our vision of fair and collaborative monetization (peer-to-peer and long tail), prioritizing independent curators & creators.

We want to share with you how we intend to use Web Monetization to generate wealth for artists, creators, and content curators on our platform. Basically, our idea is to use Web Monetization and Interledger Protocol to: (i) allow curators to monetize exclusive content galleries; (ii) allow creators (beginning with musicians and podcasters) to upload audio content and receive for each second listened; and (iii) allow microdonations from people to curators & creators they love. This is our initial attempt for creating a user flow for this process: https://www.loom.com/share/cff6d9f159024c1399245b19aaf22149

We are very interested in the potential of this technology to innovate our platform’s business model. Of course, we have some challenges to overcome, like bringing people to experiment with this new technology. We believe a friendly UX/UI and simplified communication will help.

Another common question is how to measure the value of content curation? How can exclusive/premium curated galleries be differentiated from the free ones available on our platform? Not only through the curator's individual strategy, but also through tools that our platform might offer.

It would be nice to hear some of your views or similar projects on these matters. We expect to come back soon with new developments and updates about our journey to monetize curators and creators on the internet. Meanwhile, feel free to share your thoughts and feedbacks about Kult as well :)

See ya!