My SocialFi Experiment (3 Years Too Early)
I didn’t invent SocialFi. But I prototyped it before the term existed.
In 2020, I launched a token called $TATR. It was a social currency designed to reward people not for staking capital but for sharing digital art.
We called the mechanism Social Liquidity Mining (SLM).
The idea was simple: reward people who spread value, not hoard it.
At the time, it felt experimental. In hindsight, it looks inevitable.
What I Built
$TATR was a token distributed through SLM. It was an early attempt to design tokenized incentives for cultural engagement.
You could only earn $TATR by gifting “The People’s Potato” NFT to someone who had never owned one.
Both sender and receiver were rewarded, but only if it was a first-time interaction.
The protocol included a reward split, anti-gaming mechanics, and a Social Distribution Score (SDS) model to measure organic behavior.
In total, 695,000 tokens were distributed.
A provisional patent was filed, then later abandoned in favor of an open-source, protocol-first ethos.
The contract was later renounced. 90% of supply burned.
What I Got Right
☑️ Social tokens are better earned than bought
$TATR wasn’t just airdropped. They were unlocked through interaction.
☑️ Distribution > Scarcity
I designed the protocol to incentivize sharing, not hoarding.
☑️ NFTs as community bridges
Each Potato was a conversation starter, not just a collectible.
☑️ Decentralized Patreon was coming
Anticipated token-based membership before it hit mainstream Web3.
What I Got Wrong
🚫 I underestimated gas friction
Airdropping rewards became too expensive to scale on Ethereum at the time. L2s like Base and Optimism eventually solved this, but the timing was off.
🚫 I got claiming wrong
I assumed no one would want to bother. But the opposite happened. Claiming became the new like button. A small hit of validation and control.
🚫 I thought protocol-first was enough
I believed Social Liquidity Mining could thrive at first without a platform. Technically it did. But in hindsight, platforms create social gravity. Protocols still need places to gather.
Why It Still Matters
I walked away from $TATR in 2022. Not because the idea was wrong, but because the space wasn’t ready.
In 2021, I filed a provisional patent for Social Liquidity Mining. It was a protocol designed to reward peer-to-peer participation through NFT distribution, token incentives, and anti-gaming mechanics.
Today, that thinking is everywhere.
Every week, I see platforms rolling out features first explored through Social Liquidity Mining. Peer-to-peer distribution. Earned rewards. Social scoring. Cultural tokens with no roadmap but the people holding them. Platforms like Farcaster, friend.tech, and Stack are exploring patterns I tested in 2020.
The protocol may be dormant, but the ideas are alive. They’ve shaped how I think about engagement, coordination, and what meaningful participation looks like in Web3.
This was not just an experiment. It was a signal.
🏛 Explore the $TATR archive
🧠 Let’s talk on X or LinkedIn
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