It all started in April 2021 when a couple of friends came across the Bitclout white paper and read these fateful words:

3 guys in Miami read that blurb - and 3 weeks later we shipped the V1 of a the most successful web3 ads network in history… CloutCast

We had a really simple goal: let people pay each other in crypto for sharing bitclout posts.

The 3 of us were glued to our keyboards for 20 days straight in an uninterrupted cafecito-soaked coding binge that mostly looked like this:

Now you have to remember that the early days of Bitclout were pretty wild. There was an absolute feeding frenzy of “creator coin” purchases - and getting your projects, new coins, and NFTs in front of buyers could means thousands in instant income.

CloutCast blew. tf. up.

In our closed beta of ~150 users we had paid out over $7000, won pitch competitions, and gotten the attention of major players like Balaji, and Social Capital’s Andy Artz.

We released CloutCast to the general public and things got kinda nuts

This image shows a random screen shot of a normal day where a web3 porn site “Pinkstar” spent over $500 on promos, NFT scam artists pumped their bags, and our automated payout engine “CloutCastsUnpaidIntern” paid out all those sharing posts for cash.

We were onto something, and leaned in.

We built out a “Partner API” and had every web3 social app with a meaningful user base plug into our promotion engine. We even coded a full integration with the bitclout.com main site, our finest work if I may say so myself.

In the end, the end was inevitable…

In the end, the Bitclout hype cycle wound down and all metrics went to zero. CloutCast’s moment in the sun was over without a vibrantly active web3 Social Chain to operate on top of.

Between the 3 of us we’ve launched hundreds of apps and products, but never had we seen initial traction like with CloutCast. The team has largely moved onto other endeavours, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on the web3 Social space. The minute there is another viable user delighting application like OG Bitclout -- you’ll find us there creating user testimonials like this one: