What's up with Minds Tokens?

I was on Minds before the great points/token switch took place. I didn’t pay that much attention to it at the time. Reading many posts on a number of different channels since convinced me that additional research was needed.

Minds Points

As is often the case we need to backup a little to get a better perspective. Initially Minds gave us Points, and it was good. We clicked on something, commented on something else, and reminded the coolest post we came across; and points appeared in our account. You could use these points to boost ( don’t get me started ) your channel, a post, or wire some tokens to another user, etc. After a few years the minds behind Minds decided to try leveraging blockchain technology to replace Points with Minds tokens.

Minds Tokens

Instead of continuing to dish out points in real time to their users Minds decided to distribute “crypto rewards” from a “Daily Reward Pool” during the test network. That last bit is from the minds page “Token 101” page.   If you are feeling a little lost hang in there with me.

Let’s break it down a little: “crypto rewards” basically mean Minds are rewarding users with “crypto-currency like” tokens that are like Ether ( which is a cryptocurrency whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform ) but are not real Ether… If that last bit made no sense, try this: Ether are a cryptocurrency just as Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.

You can continue to use these (OffChain) tokens just as points were used on Minds previously. Otherwise they are kind of useless EXCEPT for helping Minds to test everything out before switching over to the main Ethereum network. There is real “money” involved on the main Ethereum network so testing it thoroughly is not only understandable but a totally necessary step.

 I’ve read people grumbling about this transition. I understand that this did disrupt actual USD payments to some Minds users, but in any endeavor of this magnitude there are always growing pains.

If this step (leveraging the blockchain) was to be taken (I think it is the right decision ) there was little alternative.

Always Forward

If you were reading closely and don’t already have the concept, you probably noticed the (OffChain) in the previous paragraph. For our purposes you can think of OffChain as working just like points did previously.

 OnChain, alternatively, is how in the future Minds will enable you to turn minds tokens into actual Ether. You’ll configure a Ether address as your Minds OnChain address and move your OffChain tokens to OnChain and into Ether.

If you don’t do crypto or couldn’t configure an Ether address if you had to, no worries. You don’t have to use this feature. You can continue to use Minds as you always have. If however you are interested in getting started with a cryptocurrency then this is great news. You can use “play money” on minds to learn some basics. MetaMask is a simple way to get started.

If you are holding Ether or are a crypto vet maybe you are wondering who's paying for the GAS. During the test phase Minds will pay it (at least once - clarification?) for you to help them test the system. I’m wondering how Ethereum scales…

What’s Next?

As far as I understand it there is no published date for Minds switching from the Rinkeby Ethereum Test network to the main Ethereum network. Additionally Minds is planning on releasing something called token economics but there is no time-table on it either.

I hope this helped someone lol. I learned allot researching this, if anyone did find this helpful let me know and I’ll write more.