Taki: Deep Dive

8 min readJul 11, 2022

The creator economy has been booming since the late 2010s when Patreon became popular and creators started to disclose their earnings primarily on their own YouTube channel. Now, it has become a mainstream industry where techies are trying to normalize it by building new apps and raising funds. U.S. creator economy startups alone have raised more than $6 billion in funding from January 2021 until now.

India is not far behind with over 100 million creators across platforms but only a top layer that has more than 100k subscribers earn around INR 20K to INR 50K per post. Mostly they earn through brand partnerships, but with the rise in creators and the dwindling economy, it is becoming more uncertain day by day. From my personal experience interviewing creators with less than 100k followers last year, they wish for their IG posts to go viral randomly so they can get more subscribers and in turn secure brand partnerships that pay well.

In this scenario, creators need other ways to earn money from their content. As we have seen with many new creator startups following the 100 true fans principle where only a handful of fans or subscribers can contribute enough to make a living. But this is true only when the service provided is priced high and extremely differentiated, otherwise, this is also a struggle for an average creator.

Creators who create content to follow their hearts and showcase their skills now can monetize from their true believers. I wish I had a way to back my favorite creators (like Doja Cat) in past or even now, to engage more with their content and help them create more.

Now comes web 3.0

In India crypto is gaining popularity with more than 100 million of the population owning crypto, web3 adoption is surely going to see an upward graph too hopefully. This means people are familiar with tokens to earn money.

What if tokens can be used in the creator economy? 🤔

Taki app allows this in the most novel way by using social tokens.

What on earth are social tokens now

Social tokens are a type of cryptocurrency that can be created, bought, traded, cashed out, etc. like any other crypto token. They can be issued by any entity, an individual, DAO, community, or whatever that represents owning a part of the entity. True to its core of web3, it signifies ownership with who holds the tokens.

They can be used for various purposes:

Access: Creators or Communities can use social tokens to give tiered access to their creations or clubs. A classic example is Friends with Benefits which created $FWB token in 2021 to provide access to their community or events and became so popular that its value was $196.19 on Aug 28, 2021. It now charges 75 $FWB just to enter its Discord and chat with fellow members.
Investment: Tokens can also be used by anyone to raise money from their supporters and promise them an appreciation of the token value (ideally). If you search ‘social token’ on Twitter, the topmost result will be Alex Masmej who created the first personal token $ALEX, and used that to raise $20,000 to fund his move from Paris to SF.

There is immense potential in social tokens with obvious downsides as it’s still in a relatively new crypto space that is facing a harsh winter currently. But the positives will win in the long term as the technology becomes simpler and scalable. To issue and interact with social tokens is extremely difficult, using many platforms to dabble in and to scale to the next set of users has to be seamless (more like IG or YouTube, or Twitter).

Enter Taki

Taki is enabling creators or communities to make a social token called user coins. It visualizes this whole economy as a social network, where users can earn a daily income too by engaging with content. It follows an engage-to-earn model which is typically used in games like Axie Infinity to incentivize casual users to engage. This becomes all the more important in the creator economy where fans while supporting their stars can also earn a passive income.

How does it work!!!

A normal user onboards the app by simply registering with their Google account or mobile number (necessary for verification). Taki has its own wallet that is identified by the user’s mobile number. All users are awarded 3 TAKI to authenticate the account (a great way to remove the cold start problem and jumpstart the action loop).

In this process, a user coin with their username is created (mine is reetzcy).

Hold on! What’s TAKI or USER COIN

TAKI is the native token of the Taki app in which any user normally earns and deals with.

User coin is a token representing the value/fan following of an entity. It’s represented as 1 user coin = x $TAKI. As more people buy user coins, the x will increase. For example, the top user coin on TAKI is kevinchou owned by its cofounder Kevin. 1 kevinchou equals 39.40 TAKI equals INR 61.43 per user coin.

The greatest thing about these user coins is that they are not platform dependent and the creators will TRULY OWN their tokens (yet to see this happening tho to get full clarity).

TAKI can be earned in many ways on the platform:

Authenticate the account by contact number (mandatory to activate wallet)
Invite up to 3 friends and once they authenticate their account, get 1 TAKI for each
Comment once on any post on the platform
Create a post once on the platform
Buy a user coin that is not owned by the user
Give a Gold Taki to another user on the platform
Receive a Gold Taki from another fellow user
If you own, any user coins and they get Gold Taki, then a percentage of it will come to your wallet.

Gold Taki is similar to a like on Instagram or Twitter. Users have to spend 2 TAKIs to like a post, so 1 Gold Taki equals to 2 TAKIs. The creator who gets the Gold Taki gets 50% of its value in TAKI and the rest is distributed proportionally to the users who own the creator’s user coins.

How does this all make sense?

From what I have observed using Taki, user coin’s value appreciates when other users buy the creator coins.

Other users will buy that creator’s user coin when they have supporters (users gifting them Gold Taki). This is such that they will also get % of the TAKIs. More the number of supporters, the more popular the account, and the more likely that future posts will also get Gold Takis.

As the number of supporters increases, the worth of that user coin will increase, which in turn will increase the coins in circulation. This is controlled by a token bonding curve, which is simply an automated function written in the backend to improve price stability, availability, liquidity, etc.

So the motto is to create content, form a supportive community, and everyone benefits.

USER COINS can be transferred to Solana wallets and then exchanges can transfer to other crypto or fiat.

Who are the visionaries

TAKI is co-founded by Sakina Arsiwala and Kevin Chou. Sakina comes from an extremely successful social media background and Kevin Chou is a partner at SuperLayer and founder of the Rally protocol that powers Taki.

Taki is a place where users can earn a daily income by simply posting content and chatting with others. — Sakina

It has already seen positive traction with 100k+ users in beta, and 3.1 million $TAKI tokens are locked in user coins. Taki is geared to launch in India first and then other key markets in South East Asia. It already has many users from India and other SEA countries, a lot of content is in Hinglish and other local languages.

Let’s talk about competition

In India, there is a huge player with engage to earn model, popularly called Chingari 🔥 with its $GARI tokens. It’s a TikTok format app launched in 2018. It currently has 35 million monthly active users and is one of the top social apps in India.

It has a referral program and NFT marketplace, well marketed by Salman Khan (too many BHAI fans were pleased I guess). But creators cannot issue their own tokens which stops them from cultivating a meaningful long-term community that will always support them.

Chingari has been in the market for a long time, but it will be interesting to see how users react to Taki with its different format.

Crowdpad is another mobile-first platform powered on Solana that allows creators to issue coins and create a community. Taki is similar but has the upper hand as it also allows casual users to earn TAKI by engaging with likes and comments.

Crowdpad is similar to Patreon where the more a fan buys, the more they get involved in the community. It’s a beautifully designed app and is in beta currently. but it will be interesting to watch how it captures users. I am bullish on this project too btw because the market is just right and Solana is doing everything to build mobile-first experiences huge.

My take on Taki

The onboarding process was extremely simple taking me to step by step and automatically creating a user coin and also rewarding me with TAKI initially. The entire flow was simple and gradual, and the architecture resembles many web 2.0 apps thus familiarizing actions. A screenshot below of how it looked on my iPhone browser.

It can improve much by educating users who are new to web 3.0 by clearly communicating the value proposition and being open about security (Indians care a lotttt about this). Also, I wish they would launch an iOS app soon, so many other creators don’t miss out on the opportunity.

I believe with its Engage to Earn model that clearly incentivizes users, it is going to be loved. With many innovations happening rapidly in this space, it will be interesting to see how users adopt it and grow with it.

Read this thread by Sakina to get the excitement.

To join their waitlist and get started early to beat the competition, later on. Register on https://taki.app/.

LFG 🚀