The Interledger Community 🌱: Snake Nation

Woman in Tech Hackathon

Lawil Karama — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 13:58:24 +0000

Woman in Tech Hackathon
Our previous hackathon was the Woman in Tech Hackathon to tackle Gender Based Violence Snake Nation partnered with CPUT establish Women in Innovation and Business(WIB) Society, a university programme designed for correcting all the barriers to diversity by working with diverse partners, judges, mentors, and trainers; expanding recruitment networks to diversify the pipeline; designing curriculum intentionally tailored to more diverse needs.

Female students don't feel safe behind the campus walls, CPUT GBV hackathon is aimed at finding digital solutions to fight the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV).

The Assignment

Students are asked to explore ways of making campuses and communities safer, investigate how best to respond to threats, and produce tech ideas that could save lives. Using both technology for creating tech solutions and creating content to drive awareness. CPUT students were given 24hours to build solutions to fight GBV.Top 5 solutions will be given 5 days to turn their ideas into businesses.

To create more awareness within the Grant for the Web Community we have added some of numbers on Gender-Based Violence since it still is a shocking reality for so many women in South African.

51% of women in SA say they’ve experienced GBV, with 76% of men saying they’ve perpetrated GBV at one stage in their lives (2010 Gauteng sample).

A similar study revealed that one in five women report that they have experienced violence at the hands of a partner.

2018- 2019, 52,420 sexual offences were reported .(Most of these were cases of involved rape).
This an average of 116 rapes each day.

2019-2020, 53,293 sexual offences were reported, an average of 146 rapes per day.

2019-2020, a total of 2695 women were murdered in South Africa. This means a woman is murdered every three hours.

Femicide is five times higher in South Africa than the global average, with South Africa having the fourth-highest female interpersonal violence death rate out of the 183 countries listed by the WHO in 2016.

The Participants of the Hackathon

RMI DEV TECH
MZI TECHNOLOGY
APP 4 ALL
TECH SOLUTIONZ
HUSTLERS TECH

Projects explained

RMI DEV TECH

Wearable gear e.g. button and watch.
Life GPS Tracking via Google Maps API.
Multiple Tack Activation.
Whatsapp message and SMS send to ICE (in case of emergency) contacts messages will be a weblink which redirects to a 30 seconds record of the victims situation/ scenario and GPS location.
Option to share experiences of GBV on the platform.
Statistical reports based on the users interaction, data and location.

APP FOR ALL

For physical safety - the App has a panic button in case of emergency that will help alert next of kins and the SAPS -The app enables the users to send their location in case of attacks

For psychological and emotional health - the app has a news feeds where an individual can engage with people who have been in similar situation anonymously and without judgement

counselling feature is available on the app for victims of violence.
-For sexual violence - one is Able to book an appointment for counselling at the 'centre for all'.
create awareness through content in a form of memes, videos, images, post.
help track number of offences per perpetrator
-help calculate the violence rates in all areas and parts of the world, to create more accurate about the rates of GBV.

MZI TECHNOLOGY

Engage Prompt | 24hr Counselling, You can communicate (via text/VNs) with a team of trained administrators, i.e Social Workers, Counsellors, Psychologists, etc.
Red-Flag Prompt | Anonymous disclosure to our professionals about incidents which may display any violation of human rights in any of your relationships, and receive professional advise
IAmHere Prompt | Real-time tracking (in case of potential harm), if ever user find themselves in places like clubs, alone or just feeling unsafe. Because MZI has a geological tracker, it therefore allows us to locate any of our users, with great proximity and accuracy.
Panic Prompt | Emergency Response, This allows us to identify users who seek urgent assistance, that are in harm's way at that specific time,
The SAPS (South African Police Service) is in service and key when partaking these emergency responses, All information within the user's 'digital diary is used to build a solid case and possible conviction of a perpetrator

TECH SOLUTIONZ

Voice Recognition through a programmed command.
Pickup unusual sounds/signals when the user screams out for Help.
Sends all data to the ICE Contacts in form of Vibration and Sound by recording the victim's surroundings and emitting to all ICE Contacts
This Chip is an option for phones that are not smart as this processor will be integrated in all phones.

HUSTLERS TECH

This JEWELLERY could save your life.

When you double press the back side of the charm, it instantly sends a text message with your GPS location to all the emergency numbers you’ve set to let them know you need help.
It uses Bluetooth Low Energy and works with a free app that you install on your phone.
The simple setup allows you to choose up-to all ? that you'd like to notify.
The app also allows you to enable a free and optional 1-1-2 feature which can share your location with 1-1-2 dispatchers during an emergency.

Video of the Award

Prize received by RMI DEV TECH

R30 000 in cash (from SN and Liquid),
R100 000 AWS Business support,
R30 000 IOTA cash injection,
R50 000 Africa’s Talking API Support.

The other participants all received R100,000 AWS Business support MZI, APP4ALL, TECH SOLUTIONS and HUSTLERS TECH

The GVB content challenge

An addition to the Hackathon was the content challenge where students of the CPUT could showcase their social justice creativity in four different disciplines.
Content created will be used during the 16 days of activism against Gender-based Violence, content will be showcasing talent from CPUT students.

*Part of the brief *_The language that the media chooses to employ while reporting rape and sexual violence can heavily influence the way its audience views gender-based violence. It can determine whether an incident of rape is viewed in a way that reproduces victim blaming narratives and rape culture, or in a way that affirms the agency of women and girls, and their right to safety and freedom from violence. How the media chooses to frame gender-based violence has direct ramifications on how society understands the phenomenon.

All the winners got R10 000 in Cash and Snake Nations is working with the winners to develop a web-series and a music videos. And ten more creatives received support on the App through VNM.

PHOTOGRAPHY, MARTHA KUBULE

Martha Kubule who showcased her work for 7 days at the State Theatre,

SHORT FILM,MIHLALI MALI

Watch the Trailer here

MUSIC, NTLABA ECUMENICAL

Here is Ntlaba's music

POETRY,UYANDA KIVA

We are extremely interested in your thoughts, so don’t shy away from commenting or sending me or other team members @tawandabrandon @lwlkarama

We will keep everyone updated on our progress through our post!

SNAKENATION — MozFest 2022 Web Monetization Action Plan

Lawil Karama — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 11:06:18 +0000

Project Description

Snake Nation is a mission driven culture content and tech company based in Atlanta, GA and Cape Town, South Africa. Our focus is on helping young diverse creators access the creative economy via our platform the Snake Nation app which is a social media platform with digital wallets and VNM is our platform utility token. VNM is a cryptocurrency that lives in every Snake Nation app user's digital wallet and is earned through social engagement with content and traded for access to premium content, creative services, mobile data, merch, and more.

VNM Description
VNM (Venom) is the Snake Nation App platform token, a cryptocurrency that lives in every user's assigned digital wallet and can be traded for access to premium content, creative services, mobile data, merch, and more.

The Evolution of our token will allow users to create digital content assets, allow digital web payments, and exchange for traditional and web 3.0 currencies such as… XLM , Bitcoin, USDC, and fiat when allowed.

The VNM token is a layer two token project built on the Stellar Network designed to integrate with financial exchange systems (DEX) creating opportunities for off ramp to the real world.

VNM Wallet
The VNM Wallet is a blockchain based wallet, that securely stores the value earned through platform activity, with potential to also hold digital assets in the near future. At this time Snake Nation App users are able to send and receive VNM peer to peer, and later this year use it for merchandise and rewards and IRL experiences.Send and receive VNM on Snake Nation Platform.Manage balances and trade VNM for fiat Integrated KYC provides banking services to previous marginalized creatives Manage NFTs issued from content living on the platform value creation in perpetuity of posted content

Ways in Which we Am Web Monetizing the Resources

We are building an ILP Capable VNM Wallet that allows for creative publishers to collect/stream Web Money and e-commerce to their VNM Wallet. The VNM token is meant to streamline and reduce the friction that exists on the current global payment systems, which in emerging markets, marginalizes most of our members when it comes to receiving their earnings.
Having the ILP wallet integrated into the app allows for enhanced wallet functionality including the ability to make

P2P payments
Cross-border payments and withdrawals, top-ups
Contactless payments in any currency

Our relationships with partners & local financial institutions will allow for off-ramps to cards and mobile money.

To our community of 8m +college students and an audience of 300M millennial multicultural youth, we are providing a key service to improve their lives, creating an onramp to the creative economy and driving adoption of ILP.

Currently our digital wallet holds users' creative value in the form of VNM, an XLM compatible token on the Rinkeby testnet. Every user gets a unique VNM wallet and credentials ready to use within the network.

In this day and time, it's more important than ever that we live our values of diversity, innovation, equity and authenticity. Now more than ever we are seeing creatives drive tech adoption and media. We see Snake Nation as an onramp into the creative economy and our ecosystem as a global driver of a value for young creators of color

We'd Love the Community Support with this Project By… signing up to join our BETA or connect with us through our social media channels.
Pull up @SnakeNation.co for the #MOZFEST2022 #WEBMONEY #SnakeNation

So Let's Stay Connected - here are some links where you can reach us.

Link tree - https://linktr.ee/snakenation
Instagram - https://instagram.com/snakenation.co?utm_medium=copy_link
Website (company) - https://snakenation.co/

✌🏾

Snake Nation Community Call

Lawil Karama — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 15:48:31 +0000

Hello everyone,

I wanted to thank you for attending our community call on the 29th of november (GMT+2)

For the ones who have missed our session we recorded it, Enjoy our session

If you have any questions or would like to connect just reach out to @tawandabrandon or @lwlkarama

Community Call by Snake Nation

Lawil Karama — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 13:13:44 +0000

Hey everyone,

Just a reminder that the community call tonight will be hosted by SnakeNation

This call will be an hour. We will use Airmeet and collaborative note taking for this event.

We acknowledge that for a global community this time may not be friendly to all timezones so we will be recording the call to share and commit to moving these monthly meetings to different times going forward.

You and your team can register (free) for the session here. The Airmeet link will be shared in the Eventbrite invite and note taking document to all those who register for the session ahead of the call.

Tawanda & Karl will host this Community Call with the help of Kokayi Issa will discuss how members of the grant for the web community can explore their platform and how they have incorporated Web Monetization and ILP on the Snake Nation platform.

Agenda:

1.Opening
2.Introduction to Snake Nation
3.Why the Snakenation Platform and the creative economy with GftW Ambassador Koyayi Issa
4.Why are we integrating with grant for the web
5.Demo the Platform
6.Questions
7.Closing

We do hope you can join us! To register go to: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/208314082027

Looking forward to seeing you today at 17.00 (GMT +2)

Grant Report#1

Lawil Karama — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 17:20:37 +0000

Project Update

Here we are finally updating everyone on our progress report, it has been a couple of very busy months with a lot of research, conversations and the continuation of the build of our project, dubbed "making our wallet ILP capable" started off as a noble idea to allow creatives on the Snake Nation platform to participate in WM without needing an additional crypto-wallet to handle ILP earnings.

For those on the forum who do not know already the Snake Nation Platform. We are focused on creating sustainable value in the creative economy, benefiting young creative rebels, emerging talent, and established professionals through the creation of an open and inclusive platform and community. The new shared creative economy will be defined by the direct connection between creators, their audience, and value driving opportunities within the Snake Nation platform.

The use of both traditional and digital platforms for the distribution of the creative content, ultimately promotes unrestricted economic growth and freedom of expression for creators. This will enable the establishment of sustainable future careers for the M2 creatives. The Snake Nation Platform is an application for content tracking, rewards, and ownership that uses blockchain technology to transfer value. It is an extension of the existing Snake Nation community which comprises real-world places, university societies (clubs), and digital platforms helping to create an unrestricted globally inclusive creative economy.

While we have our platform available only as native apps on the Android Playstore and iOS store (in TestFlight) the current stages of this granting period would merely allow our members to obtain a payment pointer from their wallet screen. This would also be accompanied with integration instructions on their external websites, allowing them to monetize their content outside of our platform. Since their payment pointers would be connected to their account, their WM earnings would automatically be streamed to their VNM wallets.

Progress on objectives

Project research, consultation and fact gathering: Although this took longer than we anticipated, we have managed to map out our integration with ILP starting with architecture diagrams, network and cloud architecture as well the integration plan.
MVP development, Cloud infrastructure & ILP connector configuration: The MVP was initially supposed to be a showcase of our ILP integration on the testnet. We managed to set up a local ILP network during our research phase, because the research phase took longer with the experience we now have and support from our development partners we are going to move directly to a Mainnet integration.
BETA launch of Mobile App at CPUT University : Our ILP integration is not yet complete, we have also made some headway on the front-end wallet living in the mobile app. Users are already able to see an ILP menu in their wallet that provides access to their payment pointer as well WM Integration Instructions.
Promotion of Web Monetization and ILP to our Student members through Hackathons and other means such as our own platform: We have currently planned a Hackathon on the 9th and 10th of October after the first event there will be two more on a smaller scale.

Key Activities

Project research

In the initial phase of the project research we created multiple architecture diagrams and use cases for our platform but alongside with our roadmap and potential features. While the process lead to interesting discussions it also made the team realise we should hold back on project documentation since certain aspects will change once the integration takes place due to certain adjustments once it is in place. Furthermore our research gave us a better understanding of the technology and how we in the future would like to build and expand on this feature and sight the potential new adoptions

MVP development

Cloud infrastructure We are at the early stage of the build that integrates the ILP into our Digital Wallet.

Promotion of Web Monetization and ILP

We have two more Hackathons planned, where we intend to introduce these technologies to our community and garner a community of developers and users alike as we head towards the launch of this MVP in late November. Our first Hackathon was planned for the 4th of October but had to be postponed to the 10th due to covid restriction at the university. During the Women in Tech Hackathon we are going to introduce the technology to female developers in South Africa to expand on their knowledge to come to new solutions combining gender based violence and the usage of online platforms in combination with Web Monetization and ILP. We are hoping that the participants will come up with diverse solutions that could help protect furthermore the winners of the Hackathon will receive a small grant of 5000 Miota to use as they please.

We have had amazing interest and participation from the Web Monetization community in our project. This support resulted in advice, talks and introductions to ILP by notable speakers including Adrian Hope-Bailie from Fynbos, and grammy nominated artist, producer and educator Kokayi. Adrian has provided amazing technical guidance of ILP and payment flows. Kokayi has advised on WM community building and use cases in the creative economy.

We have done some promotion about our platform ILP and Web Monetization towards our community members. Additionally we are expanding our partnerships by becoming a member of the W3C

Articles

Problems

**Our Hackahton was postponed for about a week due to Covid measurements and in South Africa.

**We underestimated what the integration would require beyond just the technical build and coding (Regulation, Peering, Settlements etc)

**Communication, Our goal was to have different members of the team collaborate on articles and share their knowledge while we were already aware of the - of our project we believed it would be doable to do a weekly update but we have underestimated the amount of work the team is actually doing and our own enthusiasm.

What Community support would benefit this project

We welcome anyone from the community to join our platform, to give us feedback on how we can improve our platform and user experience. If there are any questions about our experiences during the grant period or provide and or receive guidance we would not want anyone to hesitate to contact us.

What is next

For the granting period our focus lies on the VNM Wallet integration and the Hackathons: which will allow us to test our VNM wallet integration with our community as a buildup from the first Hack.Alongside these objectives the we are following our current roadmap towards the launch of our product at the end of Q1 2021!

We are extremely excited to follow along with our path in becoming the gateway for the creative economy.

Snake Nation’s Hackathons

Lawil Karama — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 17:39:29 +0000

For our university societies we have different offline programs such as our Hackathons. The Hackathons are a moment for our members to come together and create innovations based on the current socio- geographical Holistic needs. We empower youth to build tools and technology businesses that will help to improve lives in their communities. The objective of hackathons is to encourage and enable the creation of innovative solutions to address the shift in digital technology use in Africa. Our previous events saw the wide range of subjects and interests of the students.

For example in 2016 the University Poetry competition to celebrate the power of poetry across the African Universities. event where our members in the Campus societies are a composition of different artists, and members who are just fanatics of art and entertainment. Students have used this art form as a form of protest and a way of addressing their issues, sometimes through struggle songs but always with a feature of poetry to creatively lament on their lived social realities on Campus. The space that we have created, is a safe space where students can express themselves and raise awareness also on other social issues, such GBV ( Gender based Violence ), Rape Culture.

The Latest hackathon we gave was for the Tshwane City Group named, Tshwifi smart cities hackathon. It was based on the needs of Pretoria city in South Africa. The intent of the hackathon is to find technology based solutions that will assist the City of Tshwane in addressing service delivery challenges aligned to the following stream of business:

1.sustainable water, energy and waste resource sustainable
2.transport & mobility
3.responsible and sustainable tourism

The hackathon will form part of the building blocks to achieving the new vision for 2030 which is in part anchored around service delivery excellence and innovation; creating jobs; promoting social cohesion and inclusion; and fostering participation and collaboration. By successfully implementing the proposed hackathon the City will accelerate its momentum in igniting excellence and achieving the 2030 vision.

Woman in Tech Hackathon

This weekend we will host our Woman in Tech Hackathon
Friday 8th till 9th of October

Snake Nation partnered with Openseed to establish Women in Innovation and Business(WIB) Society, a university programme designed for correcting all the barriers to diversity by working with diverse partners, judges, mentors, and trainers; expanding recruitment networks to diversify the pipeline; designing curriculum intentionally tailored to more diverse needs.
Women in Innovation and Business(WIB) is an initiative that works with university female students studying in any of African universities

Our motivation is to apply impact driven programmes with a global scope that counter social challenges and facilitate greater diversity in tech development. The internalisation of gender roles in Africa has their roots deeply entrenched in the patriarchal society. There are binaries when it comes to work division and choice of jobs, with some subjects deemed as more feminine (E.g. nursing, teaching, biology) and some more masculine (E.g. mathematics, science, computer science).

The effect spills over to the low number of women involved in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Innovation (STEMI), creating barriers of entry for women into high paying career opportunities that STEMI offers. Less than 2% of venture capital funding goes to women-led businesses in women owned businesses, despite women achieving 35% ROI In Africa only 9% of start-up’s have women leaders and only 30% of women in Africa are in the technology and innovation related sectors.

CSRC and Snake Nation will introduce and promote regional collaboration and exchange of ideas to address national and regional challenges

These programmes are designed to be scalable in a variety of ways. Cohort size, length of programs, size of production and media budgets. Based on the goals and resources available, the program can be scaled and lead in partnerships after the initial setup face.

Our Program includes

1.Workshops
2.Meetups Sessions
3.Hackathon
4.Pitch Night
5.Startup Programme
6.Skills Podcast

The upcoming Women in Tech Hackathon is a collaboration between Snake Nation partnering with Cape Peninsula University, IOTA, Liquid telecom and Africa is talking.

Problem statement

Africa is witnessing a spike in Gender Based Violence (GBV) related offences and femicide. Sexual violence has been a long-standing issue. Similarly, there have been students actively challenging this violence from as early as the 1980s. Female students don't feel safe behind the campus walls, CPUT GBV hackathon is aimed at finding digital solutions to fight the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV). Gender-based violence is a shocking reality for so many women in South African

51% of women in SA say they’ve experienced GBV, with 76% of men saying they’ve perpetrated GBV at one stage in their lives (2010 Gauteng sample). A similar study revealed that one in five women report that they have experienced violence at the hands of a partner.
In 2019/20, 53293 sexual offences were reported, an average of 146 per day, up from 52 420 in 2018/19. Most of these were cases of rape. Of this the police recorded 42 289 rapes in 2019/20, up from 41 583 in 2018/19, an average of 116 rapes each day (SAPS Crime Stats).
In 2019/20, a total of 2695 women were murdered in South Africa. This means a woman is murdered every three hours. Femicide is five times higher in South Africa than the global average, with South Africa having the fourth-highest female interpersonal violence death rate out of the 183 countries listed by the WHO in 2016.

Students are asked to explore ways of making campuses and communities safer, investigate how best to respond to threats, and produce tech ideas that could save lives.

The expected outcomes

Providing an opportunity to young people and startups to collaborate for better understanding of the challenges faced by the humanity and working towards finding solutions;
Engaging young people and startups more actively on issues related to social concern Developing advanced digital skills, making them more employable and entrepreneurial Encouraging young people in building technology-based start-ups thus contributing in economic independence of the region as well as creating more job opportunities. Creating excitement around 5G and getting young people ahead.

We are very excited about the upcoming weekend and the solutions our members will come up with. On the 11th of oktober we will announce our winners.

We are extremely interested in your thoughts, so don’t shy away from commenting or sending me or other team members @tawandabrandon and @orinea a message.

We would also like to thank Jacque Njeri for the beautiful artwork!

We will keep everyone updated on our progress through our post!

Web monetization adoption through Snake Nation platform

Orinea — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 15:04:25 +0000

The Snake Nation Platform is an application for content tracking, rewards, and ownership that uses blockchain technology to transfer value. It is an extension of the existing Snake Nation community which comprises real-world places, university societies (clubs), and digital platforms helping to create an unrestricted globally inclusive creative economy. As the Snake Nation platfrom and ILP integration is underway, we are now thinking about adoption.

Web monetization disconnect

When people think of web monetization, the term is what it sounds like: monetization over the web! But what the term doesn't explain is that you can also protect your privacy, protect your data, save your time, and use open protocols to seamlessly distribute payments. This can potentially create an incomplete perspective around what web monetization is and which problems it actually addresses.

I see Adoption as the biggest yet most exciting challenge for Web monetization. The general onboarding to web monetization is easy as a creator because creators have an imperative to monetize what they create. There is more friction for the person consuming the content. What drives them to sign up for a service to pay you? Why should they pay when there is an expectation that everything online is free?

Why we need Web Monetization.

As we start to tackle the adoption problem, we acknowledged that there is no single answer to why we want a safer web, a faster web, and a web that seamlessly supports content creators from all over the world. I can start to explain the web monetization API, the technology behind inter ledger, the meaning of open protocols, and even explain the process of transferring funds through the web, but the simple answer is: we need a "better web" that is more secure, and even less Frustrating. We need a web that supports content creators without extorting users and a web that generates income for content creators without having to sell user privacy.
Whenever creators rely on a platform which they have no control over, they are putting trust into the platform.They are trusting that what they create will be served, their rights will be preserved and the platform will act in their best interest. This speaks directly to the core mission of the Snake Nation Platform which we co-develop with creatives, which then highlights an intersection with Web monetization and presents a strong adoption path.

Promoting the benefits of Web Monetization

The Snake Nation Platform appeals to creatives mainly because of its simplicity in allowing creatives to earn. With the Platform we focus on a trilogy: Create > engage > earn. This positions the platform to deliver web monetization to our users.

By using an ILP capable wallet our users will benefit, by the ease of currency conversion and access to international markets/locations. The understanding and promotion of the incorporated technology simultaneously lead to the adoption of our college communities.We will utilize the Snake Nation mobile platform to create contests around web monetization content and platforms.There are many ways other GFTW grantees interestingly tell the web monetization story. A great example is 'A Web Monetization Story', a website that seeks to help creators understand how simple it is to enable Web Monetization on their own sites.

For the incorporation we have a series of hackathons lined up with our college communities to educate and build around web monetization. This model is a huge part of how we at Snake Nation co-create with young people and drive technology adoption.

Overall, our goal is to use the Snake Nation Platform to increase Web Monetization exposure and awareness and to help people understand how Web Monetization fits in with their regular browsing.

Let’s engage around some other interesting ways to drive web monetization adoption.so don’t shy away from commenting or sending me or other team members @tawandabrandon and @lwlkarama a message.

Our Platform, VNM token & ILP

Tawanda Brandon — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 12:57:30 +0000

The Snake Nation Platform is an application for content tracking, rewards, and ownership that uses blockchain technology to transfer value. It is an extension of the existing Snake Nation community which comprises real world places, university societies (clubs) and digital platforms helping to create an unrestricted globally inclusive creative economy.

We are Currently in Beta and have launched a digital token called Venom (VNM) on the Stellar blockchain. With VNM we can leverage off of blockchain technology to provide increased transparency of content origin, simplify the transfer of value, and reward platform contributors. Members can earn VNM through content engagement such as FlameUps, Comments, Shares, Views etc. Likewise VNM can then be used to unlock content paywalls, for P2P and cross-border payments, e-commerce or content promotion within the platform. Brands are able to launch contests and competitions using VNM, which participating members can be rewarded from.

Our mission is to become a gateway to the global creative economy for marginalised creatives. By providing every member a VNM wallet, we reduce the barriers to entry and exorbitant costs associated with today's complex payment systems when it comes to earning online. A user's VNM wallet will be adequate to collect all their earnings from their creative product, as well as provide a way to utilise VNM in the real world as fiat.

We plan to continually integrate and build upon tools and technologies that make accessing, utilising and withdrawing VNM for other currencies as easy as possible for our members. It is with this spirit that we landed on the Interledger Protocol (ILP). Rewards on the platform are predominantly micropayments in their nature, this is by design. When you take flameUps for example, which are essentially tips can be as low as 0.0025VNM. The screenshot above shows how such a transaction is reflected in the user's wallet. Such small amounts are not worth the transaction fees on most blockchains, especially when the goal is to maximise the creator’s earnings.

Our initial phases of our ILP integration will be centered around streaming small amounts of VNM to users' wallets, inside of our platform. This will be a major step towards allowing us to assign ILP payment pointers to user wallets based on their unique username. In addition to this, we will make it our duty to educate our users on the different ways in which they can utilise their payment pointers to receive funds on the broader ILP network.

With an ILP capable VNM wallet, we open up our users to participating in Web Monetisation, by removing the initial barrier to entry associated with acquiring and managing a blockchain wallet. Web Monetisation will allow us to realize revenue streams that depend on high volume micropayments more efficiently in real time. From tips in livestreams to pay-as-you-go models for watching, listening to and reading content on our platform. All this value would be streamed in realtime to the respective users using our existing rewards engine.

Our hopes by the end of our project, is to allow more creatives to understand and look more towards Web Monetisation to earn from their creative work. We hope that our VNM wallet will provide a good basis for our members trying to get into Web Monetization, and for their participation all they will need is an account on the Snake Nation platform.

We will be writing more about our progress and learnings over the coming weeks, with no prior experience to Web Monetization as a team we have had a lot to learn. We are excited to bring our expertise in making this integration possible and together with our network. We are grateful for having Access to this GFTW community for we have already been learning and connecting with other developers across the globe!

...

We are extremely interested in your thoughts, so don’t shy away from commenting or sending me or other team members:

Lawil Karama Follow

Snake Nation is a community-driven social network that uses blockchain to build a more inclusive digital economy.

and

OrineaFollow

Running around changing the world.

a message.

We will keep everyone updated on our progress through our posts!

The Snake Nation Platform

Lawil Karama — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 13:03:51 +0000

SnakeNation.io

SnakeNation.io is our authentic social platform where creativity challenges rules and dopeness delivers value.

The Snake Nation platform is focused on creating sustainable value in the creative economy, benefiting young creative rebels, emerging talent, and established professionals through the creation of an open and inclusive platform and community. The new shared creative economy will be defined by the direct connection between creators, their audience, and value driving opportunities within the Snake Nation platform. The use of both traditional and digital platforms for the distribution of the creative content, ultimately promotes unrestricted economic growth and freedom of expression for creators. This will enable the establishment of sustainable future careers for the M2 creatives.

Snake Nation Platform is an application for content tracking, rewards, and ownership that uses blockchain technology to transfer value. It is an extension of the existing Snake Nation community helping to create an unrestricted global inclusive creative economy.

The platform uses elements of blockchain technology to increase transparency of content origin, simplify the transfer of value, and reward value to contributors on the Snake Nation Platform. Members can earn VNM through content engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares, Posts), reaching achievements called scales (set milestones for participation), and winning in the competitive feature section of the Snake Nation Platform.

VNM can be used to unlock exclusive content, transfer between members, purchase goods and services, and promote content within the platform. Brands are able to leverage the platform participant engagement by sponsoring feature contests and individual content creators.

The platform community is comprised of Snake Nation members who are utilizing the digital assets native to the Snake Nation Platform and engage in the creation, selling, and promotion of content and products (“members”) to External Digital Platforms, Social Studios, University Societies, Brands, Media Partners, Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Influencers Content Consumers External Corporate Brands.

Members are able to maximize the benefits of the Snake Nation community. University societies, social studios, brands and external digital platforms can create or partner with curated member channels run by creatives, entrepreneurs and influencers to gain exposure on Snake Nation Platform . Through licensing opportunities, Snake Nation platform content is then made available to global media partners, and Snake Nation exclusive brand partners.

We are extremely interested in your thoughts, so don’t shy away from commenting or sending me or other team members @tawandabrandon and @orinea a message.
We will keep everyone updated on our progress through our post!

Introducing Snake Nation

Lawil Karama — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 07:33:51 +0000

Introducing Snake Nation

Snake Nation is a mission-driven culture, content and technology company, HQ in Atlanta, GA and Cape Town, South Africa. We are empowering young Multicultural Millennial (M2) creators and coders to enter the global Creative Economy on their own terms and build sustainable careers.

We encompass SnakeNation.io platform, College Societies and Social Studios dedicated to Creative Rebels in Film, Music, Art, Fashion, Dance, Gaming and Tech.
We are building a platform that helps M2 (Multicultural Millennial) creators build an audience, distribute their product and drive value for their work in the global creative economy. Snake Nations spends at least 55% of our gross profits with millennial creators and technology developers of color.

Snake Nation is a socially impactful, global creative resource and community for artists, executives, and entrepreneurs. Snake Nation is named in honor of the historically artistic and rebellious neighbourhood in Atlanta, GA. The Snake Nation Platform uniquely balances a transparent peer-to-peer value exchange, content distribution, and brand partnerships.

Where did the name come from?

Snake Nation was a real place – a historically rebellious neighborhood in old Atlanta, filled with diverse and free thinking people. When they came to Atlanta, to help build the railway, people said the small town the renegades built was “full of snake oil sellers”. The renegades embraced the name, calling their town the Snake Nation. The neighborhood was known to be where you went for a good time and to be free. For many years Snake Nation thrived. Its’ population grew, and so did its reputation. They were a political force, and formed the Free and Rowdy political party.

Snake Nation elected the first two mayors of Atlanta from that party. After a fight with the third mayor, their neighborhood was burned to the ground in 1850 which is still on Georgia books as the most lawless year in its history. Years later, that neightbod became Castleberry Hill, the arts district of Atlanta and still maintains that rebellious vibe. We wanted to pay homage to this home for rebels and our own roots in this community. We believe that locals are best equipped to tell local stories and that we must make an ecosystem that creative rebels can call home. Challenging norms and living life by our own rules, our community keeps the spirit of the original Snake Nation alive.

We are extremely interested in your thoughts, so don’t shy away from commenting or sending me or other team members @tawandabrandon and @orinea a message. We will keep everyone updated on our progress through our post!

Peace