Treechat: An “On-Chain Social Network with Money Running Through It”

Entrepreneurs are using the BSV blockchain to build incredible tools and applications. On the latest episode of the CoinGeek Weekly Livestream, Dmitriy Fabrikant

Dmitriy Fabrikant, the creator of Treechat, has been involved with Bitcoin in one way or another since around 2012. Like so many others, he heard about it and read the white paper. Because of his background as a software developer, he understood the white paper, but he didn’t buy any coins and put the idea of Bitcoin on the back burner for a while.

Fabrikant has been a big blocker from day one. He considers big blocks the default path and says there’s no alternative.

“You need big blocks,” he said, referring to it as common sense.

Treechat is an on-chain social network with money at its heart. Those who have used similar apps like Twetch will have some idea of the concept, but it has many unique features that differentiate it from previous iterations of this type of app. The aim is to use payments for social posts to elevate discourse and improve the quality of social posts.

Wuckert asked about the name Treechat, noting how the interface looks like productivity software. Fabrikant said it’s related to tree structures of thinking, notes and conversations organized in a hierarchy that allows one to pinpoint specific points. Conversations can branch off, and with a structure like this, it’s possible to track back to a specific point and go in another direction.

Interoperability and a better Internet

Wuckert reiterates his belief that everything should be interoperable, like Treechat, by utilizing standard data definitions for applications based on Bitcoin Schema. It’s not on Web 2.0 because corporations treat data as property and operate behind walled gardens, but BSV can help change that, as Treechat shows.

“Think of your life as siloed streams,” he said.

Fabrikant wants to be able to abstract them out to have a single market where information can be valued. There’s no need for all of these separate walled gardens, and being able to see the connections between things more clearly would be valuable.

Wuckert looked back to RSS, noting how it offered something like this. He wondered how we could return to that and how we could retrain people who have been trained to consume content passively.

Fabrikant answered that money is part of the solution. Payment incentivizes quality, whereas the ad-based model incentivizes getting attention, even when that means generating negative emotions like conflict.

Treechat has many ideas about using money in a social network, e.g., by measuring confidence by locking up money as a bet that something will occur. Other ideas include locking (a concept pioneered by HODLocker) and upvaluing, which is coming soon.

As with previous iterations of BSV social media apps, content would be written to the blockchain. So, even if Treechat goes away or the user no longer wants to use it, they’d still be able to use another interface and keep their content. Fabrikant emphasized that when you say something you think is important, you want to say it forever, and the blockchain allows that.

Hasn’t this all been done already?

Some of the concepts discussed so far have been done before on BSV, but Treechat will bring many more interesting features—this is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in.

AI will be able to illustrate your content; you can summon AI agents to give their perspectives, perform research, etc., to add value to a post. Multiple models can participate in conversations and threads, enriching the conversation and elevating the quality of the public content. ‘AI and crypto superpowers’ is Treechat’s tag, and superpowers are what it will give you.

As AI creates an explosion of content, digital currencies will help us prioritize and organize it; that’s where the two tie in. Essentially, BSV is better money and will help us coordinate, organize and prioritize better.

To learn more about how Treechat creates branches, its various functions, and the importance of content curation, tune into the livestream via this link.

In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.

Watch: Demonstrating the potential of blockchain’s fusion with AI