Before launching Bonsai, we were working on a project internally called Money Clubs. The idea was to give creators on Lens a way to earn money through memberships on a bonding curve - not too far off from Friendtech or PartyDAO - but with additional features that included club members in the incentives model. The consumer crypto landscape has changed a lot since last December, and of course the success of Bonsai shifted our focus. But the idea lingered, and the success of pump dot fun reinforced our initial motivation for building Money Clubs.
After launching Bonsai, we took a break from building to talk more with projects and creators - and really think about distribution. For us, the token is the product, and getting Bonsai into the hands of more onchain users was and still is #1 priority. I think we did great work by awarding grants to Orb, Adam Levy, p00ls and others.
But last month, we came back to the bonding curves idea. We stripped it down, incorporated elements that are currently working for others, and really thought hard about distribution. The beauty of building on Lens is that we have an onchain social graph, a diverse ecosystem of clients, and now Open Actions through Transaction Frames. Being the default currency of Lens doesn’t hurt either.
We’re just about ready to ship Cashtags, but I figured I’d give some context as to why we built it - and why it’s not just another Pump clone.
We built Cashtags as a way for anyone to raise capital ($BONSAI) on a bonding curve, with an associated Lens profile.
Whatever the profile is - a creator, project, or memecoin - potential investors have social context for what they’re about to buy. They have multiple clients to view the Lens profile, but one cohesive place to view posts, tune into a livestream, and buy into the bonding curve. Through a frame, we can do these actions from our favorite Lens client.
On launch, the MadFi app will allow anyone to enable their $cashtag and promote via frames. Hey & Buttrfly will support our frames + livestreams.
Of course, the profile owner earns their cut of trading fees. They promote their $cashtag through posts, livestreams, and frames. There will also be a web app for traders who don’t have a Lens profile or want a better trading experience.
Finally - considering the Lens Network launch is on the horizon - we have a migration plan for the smart contract and $BONSAI liquidity. It will go hand in hand with the Bonsai Token migration, season 2 airdrop, and new SocialFi product launch.
100 Airdrops on Lens Network
The 100 most successful $cashtags during these next 2 months will see their liquidity migrated to Lens Network and used to initialize a pool on our SocialFi product - and tokens for it airdropped to the initial investors. This will be akin to Pump bonding curves achieving the SOL threshold for bonding curve liquidity used to launch new tokens. More details on the tokenomics will be shared as we approach the Lens Network migration.
So we’ll have a diverse ecosystem of clients supporting Cashtags, a fresh network, more liquidity, and a new SocialFi product.
Are you bullish yet, anon?
Go collect this money bonsai from @notgonnamakeit 👇
https://orb.club/p/0xc4b8-0x0304
