Damus to lure in Crypto Twitter with Bitcoin revenue payout option

Decentralized social network Damus teased an upcoming feature in its app that would allow users to earn Satoshi — the smallest fraction of Bitcoin (BTC)  — based on post engagement on the platform.

In a Twitter post, the Damus team highlighted that there will be a feature that allows users to earn Satoshis in the next version that’s “coming soon.” The team did not provide any details after the announcement.

Coming soon in the next version… earn sats directly on posts! This post earned 118k sats which is about $40. Pretty neat! pic.twitter.com/dAbWWD4i93

— Damus⚡️ (@damusapp) February 5, 2023

Damus describes itself as a social network controlled by users and does not rely on centralized companies. The application is built on Nostr, or “Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays,” which is a decentralized network that enables end-to-end private messaging. There are no servers within its network. Instead, the protocol uses decentralized relays to distribute messages.

Various community members expressed their excitement about the new Damus feature, with some even going as far as describing Nostr as “the future of monetization.”

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also been expressing support for Nostr by providing funds to the developers of the project. On Dec. 16, Dorsey said that he donated 14 BTC, which is around $250,000 at the time, to support the development of the decentralized social network.

Cointelegraph reached out to a Damus developer for comments but did not get a response yet.

Related: Twitter closes offices, staff resign while users eye decentralized options

On Feb. 1, Damus went live on the Apple App Store and became available for download for iPhone users. Following this, Jack Dorsey also shared the news through his Twitter account and described the update as a new “milestone” for open-source protocols.

The former Twitter CEO also pushed for the creation of a decentralized Twitter alternative back in Dec. 14. This followed the release of an internal investigation led by Elon Musk that highlighted censorship-related issues on Twitter. Dorsey highlighted potential solutions to the issues like resilience from corporate or government control, leaving the right to remove content to the authors and implementing algorithmic moderation.