SocialFi Startup Reach Aims to Improve Crypto Twitter With Anti-Bot Protocol

There’s a new SocialFi player in town, with an ambitious plan to help users and businesses navigate the latest changes to Twitter’s algorithm and fight the bots.

SocialFi startup Reach today announced that its “fit-for-purpose” protocol, powered by its Ethereum-based REACH token, is rolling out of beta and on track for a full launch on Monday. The company also announced that it has raised $1 million in funding, at a $3 million valuation, from a host of pseudonymous Crypto Twitter celebs, including Seedphrase, Pranksy, Gmoney, and Zeneca.

“Twitter is the home of the international crypto community, yet the platform, the algorithm, and the millions of fake profiles are a constant source of frustration to people and businesses alike,” said founder Harold Eytan (aka 8an). “We’re here to change this, and we’ve built a fit-for-purpose protocol and gathered together some of the biggest names in crypto to help us achieve this mission.”

Why now? Because crypto marketing is more challenging than ever, the company says.

Whether you’re an artist trying to gain attention for a recent collection or a brand preparing to launch a product, it’s difficult to find effective marketing channels that you can trust. Recent changes to Twitter’s algorithm have exacerbated the situation, says Reach, resulting in users experiencing less engagement than ever before. Even when engagement does occur, it often involves another one of crypto’s issues: bots.

Reach hopes to tackle these industry challenges with the introduction of its new SocialFi protocol, designed to reward quality engagement. SocialFi essentially refers to a melding of social media platforms and decentralized finance—it’s a way for engagement to be monetized, and for activity to be verified as authentic. 

In Reach’s case, users can create “missions,” such as “Engage with this tweet,” and submit them to the Reach community. Community members who choose to participate are entered into a raffle, with the winner receiving Ethereum (ETH) as a prize, contributed by the mission’s creator. All funds submitted for missions are distributed to the community, with 80% going directly to the mission and 20% to the Reach treasury, redistributed as rewards for other missions. Users also earn “points” based on the quality of their contributions, entitling them to a share of regular crypto distributions from the protocol.

Overcoming bots

While on the surface, it may seem like a familiar product with competitors like Galxe and Rabbithole, what sets it apart is the anti-farming measures implemented through the Reach Score System (RSS) and the effort-based relevancy algorithm used to score users’ missions.

A challenge faced by similar products in the past is the farming of mission or quest rewards, where users create multiple accounts to complete missions and maximize rewards. This undermines the value for brands or users creating missions, and other users lose trust in the advertised product when they see suspicious accounts interacting with it.

To address this, Reach disincentivizes farming through the Reach Score System. If a user’s account is filled with retweets of giveaways, airdrops, and other promotions, their contributions will be less weighted in mission raffles. Essentially, the more a user farms, the less valuable their profile becomes within the Reach network. Eytan explained that the goal is to reward crypto citizens with good standing, not those simply creating noise.

They have also incorporated an effort-based relevancy algorithm that rates submissions, assigning a score based on the thoughtfulness or conversation-driving nature of comments or quote tweets.

“This is crucial in the age of AI where it’s difficult to verify what’s real and what’s not. With our algorithm, we’re able to verify that real people are posting and that they’re providing genuine commentary,” NFT and crypto investor Daniel Maegaard (aka Seedphrase) told Decrypt.

Monetization plans involve offering the protocol to other crypto communities in the form of a Discord bot that enables users to issue their own missions.

Wen token?

At the heart of it all is the soon-to-be-launched REACH token. Users utilize REACH to create missions and can earn REACH by holding a “minimum threshold” of REACH tokens in their wallet. Communities using the Reach Discord bot can also reduce fees by holding specific amounts of the token.

Both the token and protocol are set to launch to the public on Monday, Dec 18, after a beta program attracted 6,000 users to the platform, according to Reach.