Twitter has overhauled its verification system—and now one noted Web3 creator wants to test its limits.
Pseudonymous NFT collector and founder of the 9dcc apparel brand, gmoney, is gamifying his company’s Twitter presence by rewarding his most active community members with free affiliate check marks and avatar badges.
Gmoney tweeted this week that he will offer the top 25 people on 9dcc’s Network Points leaderboard a blue check mark and 9dcc logo badge next to their respective Twitter usernames—which currently costs $50 per each affiliate user per month.
It could prove meaningful to fans and collectors to have the visible association with gmoney, who has over 301,000 followers, and his rising Web3 brand. And since even basic Twitter verification costs a monthly fee now, it could save them some cash in the process.
“The check mark is like a status symbol, right?” gmoney told Decrypt regarding why he’s launching this social media initiative. “I like to fuck around and find out a lot of times on these platforms.”
Holders of 9dcc Ethereum NFTs (tied to physical apparel) and gmoney’s own Admit One NFTs can earn points by participating in select online and in-person events like the Internet Game. According to the 9dcc website, however, the brand doesn’t tell holders which events will grant participants points on purpose because “part of the fun is in the discovery.”
Gmoney's experience working with big brands has been a mixed bag.
While the iconic NFT collector certainly sees opportunities for collaboration and innovation, he acknowledged that larger organizations can struggle to pivot quickly in the fast-moving NFT space.
"There are certain things a legacy brand can't do that a crypto-native brand can," he told Decrypt at this year’s NFT Paris. "I can do stuff that a major brand can't do because they're too big."
The key to successful brand partnerships i...
It will be an expensive effort, however: gmoney is footing the bill, which means the affiliate checks will cost him an extra $15,000 a year on top of the gold check mark he’s already purchased through Twitter Verified for Organizations. That already costs $12,000 per year for 9dcc’s own gold check mark.
Gmoney said he believes Twitter’s decision to call the verified affiliate accounts “affiliates” and not “employees” was intentional.
“It’s almost like lending your credibility to give somebody else credibility, right?” he said. “You’re not going to give affiliate status to everybody. You’re going to give affiliate status to people that are almost like trusted within your community, and have earned that right to be there.”
Pseudonymous NFT collector Gmoney talks to Decrypt's Dan Roberts at NFT Paris about his Web3 luxury brand 9dcc, big brands getting into NFTs, the debate over creator royalty fees, and what will come next to the space.
Gmoney sees Twitter as an extension of his existing 9dcc community—and plans to use the affiliate checks as a way to connect the dots and give top contributors something they can show off.
All that said, Gmoney isn’t sure yet if his $27,000-a-year Twitter check mark plan will be worth the investment. But he has a history of betting on new tech initiatives, including buying a CryptoPunks NFT for a then-record price in January 2021 and partnering with Adidas to bring the apparel giant into the NFT world.
“Ask me again in six months, and I’ll let you know if I think it’s worth it or not,” he said of the Twitter play. “But I think for me, I just like to try things really early on. And I think part of the reason I ended up to where I am in the NFT space was because I was fucking around with the tech really early on.”
On April 1, Twitter will carry through with new owner Elon Musk’s threat to remove existing verification checkmarks from legacy accounts on the platform—part of a push to make users and brands pay for the feature through the Twitter Blue subscription service.
The long-expected move has drawn widely negative comments from users who see it not as a way to democratize verification on the platform, as Musk and his supporters have suggested, but rather a move that will nullify the whole point of veri...
And while there's always the possibility that Twitter may stop gold checkmark holders like gmoney from drawing outside the lines with their verified “affiliates,” the NFT collector isn’t concerned about the possibility.
“If anything, they’d want to encourage it,” gmoney suggested, citing Twitter’s high profit margins on such a simple yet costly service.
“With all of the 'FUD' going on around Elon [Musk] and what he's doing at Twitter,” he continued, “to me, it could almost seem like a backdoor insanely genius move, where organizations will buy their verification and then lend their credibility to their trusted group—which all of a sudden becomes super valuable.”
Jack Dorsey chimed in on the recent rise of decentralized social media platform Bluesky on Thursday, saying that his own presence isn’t all that important even though he was a major force behind the platform’s creation. And overall, he’s keen on seeing many different such platforms emerge and thrive.
The former Twitter CEO helped incubate Bluesky and its AT Protocol internally at the social media giant starting in 2019, and the project later spun off as a separate organization. Dorsey was on the...
When asked for his thoughts on the fledgling Twitter competitor Bluesky—which has been backed by Jack Dorsey and offers a decentralized alternative in its current early access state—gmoney had a strong opinion.
“I think we’re probably not going to be talking about it in 30 days,” gmoney said.
“I'd rather bet on the person that is literally taking the electric vehicle and rocket industry and kind of created it out of nothing,” he added, “over the guy that oversaw the massive decline of Twitter over the last decade.”
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