Polygon AMA Recap with Huddln

On the 25th of February, 2021, Joseph Gonzalez, CEO & founder of Huddln, was live at the Polygon telegram AMA Session, to provide the community with insights on Huddln, the first social network built on NFTs. The session was moderated by Arun Philips, the Marketing Specialist at Polygon Network.

In order to ensure clarity to my readers, this article has been divided into two segments; the first segment, gives full account of the questions asked by the moderator of this AMA session (Arun Philips), while the second segment, gives account of the questions asked by community members.

SEGMENT 1

Arun Philips — Hello Joseph Gonzalez welcome to the Polygon community. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Could you please tell us a little about yourself and Huddln?

Joe —

Arun Philips, Thank you for having me!
By trade I’m an engineer from the SF Bay area. I built Huddln about a year and a half ago. Huddln is a social network powered by NFTs, creators can “create, own, and monetize” their content. It’s aimed at “non-blockchain” users, this means that it has been designed deliberately to obfuscate and remove as much “process friction” as possible.

The key thing that I am really proud of is that anyone can download the app and start posting within 2 mins, without knowing what blockchain even is. This is something that has been missing in blockchain the past few years, many projects focus on bringing transparency at the risk of complexity while those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. We can now create experiences that are powerful through the simplicity of UX and still retain transparency.

Arun Philips — Such an incredible idea! Powered by the hottest thing right now, NFTs. We all know how boring Facebook and Instagram have become.

Joe —

When I started this, NFTs were not really a thing yet.. So I am very glad it came full circle.

Arun Philips — There is a strong focus on creating a community-powered social media experience powered by NFTs, but how will you attract this initial community?

Joe —

Involving the user base is extremely important, and that’s why I keep pushing people on the platform to also join the discord. Getting people involved is one piece of the puzzle the other is to execute on their needs.

Also integration of other marketplaces/tools is crucial to gaining traction with users, easability of onboarding and offboarding the platform is crucial in web3, composability will play a key factor.

Lastly is the protocol behind Huddln, which is helping to bridge the functionality of the platform to others, it will allow people to build cool stuff of their own.

Arun Philips — Very true. That sounds very cool. Can’t wait to try this out. Can you tell us a bit more about Huddln and it’s features?

Joe —

Where do I start.

Arun Philips — Hahahaaa. You have a lot of time so give us your best shot.

Joe —

It’s a social network that really focuses on UX/UI while providing users retention of ownership. Some really cool features include, allowing people to tip on your NFTs, anything you post can generate earnings without having to sell your content. The “Reply-Chain” is another exciting feature that allows people to reply to posts and create chained conversations between each other.

New features are being added weekly, “Content-Staking” is another feature coming soon that will allow people to invest in content they like, “E2E Encrypted Messenger” is another thing in the pipeline, and I can go on and on.. I will just say that Huddln is just getting started and it’s going to be an NFT Social Powerhouse!

Arun Philips — Niiiiice. So every post is an NFT too?

Joe —

Yes everything is an NFT !

Arun Philips — Social Powerhouse. That’s perfect.

Joe —

Oh also its Mobile first.

Arun Philips — You keep dropping goodies!

Joe —

I can ramble on for another 30 mins, so please be sure to stop me haha.

Arun Philips — What are the major milestones Huddln has achieved so far and what can we expect from you guys in the future?

Joe —

The first milestone was the MVP that was delivered last April. From there the entire platform was reworked and redesigned with simplicity in mind. Next some of the features were split out as the “Huddln protocol”, that would allow users to implement some of the “Staking Features” for their apps, this was pushed to V2 in October this year, at this time the Huddln Social Network went into private beta. And the biggest milestone to date is NOW, just last week the Mobile Social Network Dapp went into “Open Beta” on the iOS AppStore.

Arun Philips — WOW. That was one packed paragraph of milestones. So happy to see you guys building lean and constantly iterating.

Joe —

Huddln is unique, its the first social network to be powered by NFTs & its the first NFT Dapp to focus on everyday content creators and not blockchain experts. I think Huddln is poised to really make a statement that we can now build Dapps that are beautifiull and powerful. We can now empower people with real utility and not just throw out buzzwords, what you can expect... is a revolution.

Arun Philips — App Store is MASSIVE news man congratulations on the journey so far.

Joe —

Thank you ! it was not the easiest… iOS guidelines are stringent on social networks.

Arun Philips — That’s an admirable vision. Can you tell us a little bit about how your experience was building on Polygon and what are the advantages of Huddln working with a Layer 2 like Polygon?

Joe —

Polygon was a key enabler of the experience. The MVP was actually built directly on Ethereum.. I think we know where I’m going next. The experience was.. Rough to say the least.

Arun Philips — Haha I can imagine the fees.

Joe —

Hands down Polygon is hte most advanced L2 that’s production ready compared to any other L2. The decision to use Polygon was a no brainer. I was looking ot decrease transaction times to meet the UX expectation, and Polygon has done that, and more. Not only is hte tech great, the team behind Polygon is quite frankly… amazing.

When defi hit,msending gas fees involved decisions on which organs you liked the most.

Arun Philips — Oh man this is so amazing to hear, thanks for making our days a lot brighter. Haha I’ve spend less on actual fuel than Ethereum Gas.

Joe —

I try not to shill, but when a product works, and works well. Its hard to not. Ya Defi really showed people how hard it is to do microtransactions.

Arun Philips — What are the advantages of Huddln’s social media platform compared to traditional social media and the FBs and Instagrams of the world?

Joe —

You own what you create, you monetize what you create but I think most importantly is that Huddln doesn’t own your content. That fact alone is enough to be excited about, Huddln doesn’t sell your data or collect information that does not directly benefit you. The platform is non-custodial and keeps as much data away from stewardship as possible. It’s different because it’s not in the business of “Data Real Estate”.
Facebook,Google,Instagram are really in the business of Data Real Estate.

Arun Philips — Yes you nailed it! We all know how many ‘personalized ads’ we see everyday. This is the future of ownership and media.

Joe —

Sometimes there a place for that too, but not on our social networks.

Arun Philips — So what will the future of Huddln in the decentralized revolution look like? Can you talk to us about your roadmap?

Joe —

Huddln is very different from any blockchain Dapp you may have used. It’s definitely the first of it’s kind of network but I am sure it won’t be the last. I hope what I have done with Huddln will inspire the next generation of dapps to provide real utility and experience without sacrificing the tech. The network is currently in Open Beta, as I stated above, so there are many updates being pushed each week, but in the long term I see Huddln being the go to network to create/share/monetize your content whether that be NFT art or just your dog running around in the park.

It’s super important that as a community we get to a stage that the word NFT has lost its power, because it’s become so commonplace that anything you create becomes one and we no longer need to worry if our content is “ours”. To get back to the point most of the items on the roadmap are milestones for integrations, partnerships, expansion o of the platform features and most importantly creating opportunities for the community to govern.

Arun Philips — Brilliant! Loving your ethos in how you’re building this and building features with the community. Before we conclude, I think there are many in the community who would love to join the Huddln community and stay up to date with all the news. What’s the best way to keep in touch?

Joe—
The best way to stay up to date is to join the discord. I am on the frequently, the open beta is here. (Android coming soon).

Arun Philips — Awesome!! Haha that’s cool, I’m downloading this right away. Now let’s explore some questions from the community. Please do share them below.

SEGMENT 2

Community Question 1 — Can you list the unique features of Huddln that we can’t find in any other project?

Joe —

Ya! Its mobile first so thats pretty unique already, there really isn’t a dominating mobile platform for NFTs yet. Its also not just NFTs, and that will be clear when you get on the platform, its an experience first thats powered by NFTs. Another thing to not is the Huddln protocol, its allows staking on NFTs which is really unique and allows people to invest in NFTs without having to sell them or auction them.

Community Question 2— Will you ever be doing ads on Huddln?

Joe —

No Ads ever, this goes against the ethos.

Community Question 3— Is the android version released yet? Or any ETA.

Joe —

Android should be out before April. The app isn’t available world wide as well right? The iOS version should be global. The public beta just opened up about 5 days ago, there are less than 100 currently, but its growing.

Community Question 4— Can u throw some light on content staking?

Joe — Of course, content staking lets owners of NFTs put up a public offerring allowing users to purchase stakes in that content. This allows them a percentage of ownership of future proceeds of that content. It let’s you invest in creators.

Community Question 5— How does the tipping for NFTs work? Something like Brave?

Joe —

The current model on the mobile platform is pretty simple, it’s currently just exposing you public address to users and allows suers to sendERC20 transfer to you, However this logic is currently being migrated to the protocol staking model.

Arun Philips — Oh wow sharded NFTs that sounds real interesting!

Joe —

Whats really unique abou this content staking is that its really focused on the content itself and not necessarily the NFT. So it actually lets you shard against anything. It technically could be another contract or maybe a hash of a real world item. Its super flexible in design.

Community Question 6 — A social network with NFTs great idea. How you guys would help in things with the user experience to be smoother for new users?

Joe —

UX Is extremely important, so all transactions on the platform are Gasless, and will very soon be able to directly on-ramp with fiat into the platform. Thats from the perspective of making things simple on the blockchain side.

Community Question 7 — Is there a utility token for the Huddln platform. If yes, what are the main usecases?

Joe —

There will be a token, I cannot go into tokenomics just yet as things are still being hammered out. But what I can say is that a governance model will play a key role in decentralizing the protocol.

Community Question 8 — Also if you can show some light on biconomy gasless transactions please.

Joe —

All transactions on the platform are gasless, this means any erc20 tx doesn’t need any Matic to go through, and it means people can mint NFTs without a struggle. If you download the app you can create a post in 2 mins without realizing you on blockchian..easy enough for my mom to use, and she barely knows what the internet is HAHA. and to be honest this is exactly what we need in terms of user facing dapps in the ecosystem right now.

Arun Philips — Alright thank you so much Joe Gonzalez for joining us today!

Joe —

Thanks Arun Philips It was awesome! Thank you for having me!