What Is MASK and What Does It Have to Do With Elon Musk and Twitter?

There’s a little-known coin, outside of the top 100 by market cap, that’s become Crypto Twitter’s latest obsession—and it just so happens to rhyme with a certain billionaire tech guru. 

MASK, the token powering a little-known network of the same name, made noise this week when it was added to a new Binance index.

The Binance Bluebird Index, launched on Wednesday, is a price index tracking the performance of Binance’s own BNB token, Dogecoin, and MASK, a coin buried deep in the rankings with a current market cap of just $299 million.

This launch comes about a week after Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao confirmed that the crypto exchange had indeed invested $500 million in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.

Built on top of Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon, Mask Network provides a simple interface for using various Web3 apps, allowing users to swap assets using Uniswap and SushiSwap—all without leaving Twitter.

It’s unclear though whether the token, or any tokens in the Bluebird index, will have anything to do with Twitter now that it’s under Musk.

Binance told Decrypt that “this index is not related to Binance’s investment in Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.”

Still, the new Twitter boss has touted the idea of bringing crypto payments to the platform in the past. Speculators have also latched onto the idea that this batch of assets may be integrated as a payment option on Twitter.

The MASK token rallied immediately after Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter was confirmed last week, jumping by more than 316% from roughly $1.36 on October 27 to $5.66 on Thursday, before dipping 17% over the past day to the current price of $4.50.

Mask Network’s founder and CEO Suji Yan, meanwhile, neither confirmed nor denied that the token would be used for payments on Twitter. Yan is one of 22 strategic investors in Decrypt.

“I think Elon can choose any token. A free speech platform should allow any token,” Yan told Decrypt.

He also said that the project wasn’t involved in the Binance Bluebird Index and has no control over the exchange’s new investment tool as “it’s Binance’s index and Binance invested in Twitter recently and in Mask before.”

Still, and from a purely technical perspective, the Mask network may be well suited to integrate with Twitter should the social media platform move ahead and add crypto payment options.

The network launched its MASK token in February 2021 via what is called Initial Twitter Offering (ITO)—a decentralized asset offering feature that lets users participate in token launches and airdrops or run Gitcoin grant campaigns directly on Twitter.

It also enables users to display non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on their social media profiles and make bids on marketplaces such as OpenSea or Rarible.

For now, though, it doesn’t appear like it will play a core role in Musk’s plans for the social media platform—at least not officially.