Mad Finance | the ad protocol for web3 social 💸

## Traditional ad networks are ready for disruption

The main financial engine of a web2 social app is its ad network; scrolling through your feed is free because multiple brands have paid for ad space. At the same time traditional social media platforms fail to compensate the content creators that bring engagement to their platforms. Creators aren’t compensated for their banger tweets, IG posts, or videos. These platforms harvest user data and make ad revenue off the backs of creators.

Web3 makes this model obsolete. Utilizing open social graphs and programmable tokens, we can democratize access to ad revenue, paying content creators their fair share of the attention they bring to platforms.

![https://a16zcrypto.com/state-of-crypto-report-a16z-2022/](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/9t4EdqdLBkR8CcWlM1ThK.jpg?height=872&width=1536)

## Mad Finance connects sponsors with web3 publishers and influencers via real-time money streams, giving content creators the opportunity to directly collect the 💸 💸 💸 they deserve

There has been a lot of experimentation with DeFi, NFTs, DAOs - and more recently - combinations of these. However, **web3 social** is a new playing field that the team behind the [Lens Protocol](http://lens.xyz/) has opened the gates for. The protocol is modular by design and encourages experimentation on the client side as well as the protocol side. 

On the client side, we have user interfaces such as [Lenster](https://lenster.xyz/) and [Lenstube](https://lenstube.xyz) that aim to re-create the experiences we’ve grown accustomed to such as social apps and video streaming platforms - yet they use the same decentralized social graph under the hood.

On the protocol side, developers are able to build smart contract modules that execute on follow/comment/re-share. W**e** can combine all the best experiments of the last three years to create a new experience on a similar social interface. This is where we will innovate in our integrations - for example with real-time money streams via [Superfluid](https://www.superfluid.finance/).

![Your Lens profile is an NFT, your posts are ownable, and you can control the re-shares](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/LHWtvldnzHv-_qYVAhQ6b.png?height=522&width=800)

## At Mad Finance, we are building a suite of products in the form of Lens modules, tools for campaign creation + distribution, and payouts via Superfluid money streams.

What a started as a [hackathon finalist project](https://twitter.com/ETHGlobal/status/1509222875223441408) has turned into a more ambitious idea to rethink the ad network model in favor of content creators, and ultimately pay out the users that provide valuable insights to marketers. We’re leading this effort with a few key ideas

* **everything on the internet** that can be an NFT, will be an NFT
* NFTs have the potential to be the next version of the **browser cookie**
* using NFTs and DeFi, we can **reward users** in ways not possible before

## We invite brands and creators to participate in the evolution of advertising + marketing

Our first product will be carrying the idea of [Lens Follow NFTs](https://docs.lens.xyz/docs/follow) to the next level - allowing influencers and brands to utilize them as marketing campaigns. We’re opening up a platform to allow Lens users to customize their limited edition Follow NFT that mints for all new followers. These NFTs are more than just images - they can be **redeemables, gate digital + IRL experiences,** and open the door for **loyalty programs**.

![MadFi Follow NFTs coming soon](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/8GiTk5u7DT2VuY1w1gc7n.png?height=1874&width=3104&&&&size=large)

We expect all brands to seek exposure through decentralized social media. Direct connections with influencers will create new kinds of relationships and distribution channels for content, while the on-chain nature of these ads will bring further composability, automation, and trans

Minting NFTs on zkSync | Europa Labs

## This is a technical overview of the airdrop process for 'The Discovery of Galaxy Joa' by Jupiter Group

## Not your average NFT drop!

The technologies involved make this drop pretty much the first of its kind. Using zero-knowledge proofs (`zkSync`) for token minting, `Chainlink VRF` for raffle drawing, and `Storj` for decentralized storage - there's not much more we could've done to make this more web3. And putting it all together in under 4 days is a personal feat of mine :sunglasses:

I'd like to expand on each component of this procedure to highlight some technical features and hopefully inspire others to try minting their NFTs in this fashion.

## Chaink VRF | A deterministic, fair raffle

The conditions for the drop were that we would take a snapshot of all [Boonji](https://opensea.io/collection/boonjiproject) tokens and their OpenSea listings on the night of December 13th. Out of these owners, we would choose 33 random accounts. As long as the account didn't have their token listed *or* it was listed for at least `3.3 eth` - they would qualify for the drop.

There's a myriad of ways to do this, but we wanted a process that was non-biased, cheap, and simple enough that anyone else could replicate it and generate the same list of winners that we did, provided the same input. For entropy in Solidity, developers can turn to [Chainlink VRF(Verifiable Random Function)](https://docs.chain.link/docs/chainlink-vrf/). The idea is that for every request, the VRF contract generates the random number and a cryptographic proof of how that number was determined. The only trick is the request/callback nature of this procedure, but we don't have to worry about that for this feature. If you need more info on integrating with your solidity contract, [read here](https://docs.chain.link/docs/get-a-random-number/).

To take advantage of this verifiable randomness locally without deploying a contract, we can simply uses `ethers.js` to query the blockchain for the log that the `ChainlinkVRF` contract emits upon completing a request; each event object contains the random number generated that we can use.

```javascript
// instantiate the contract object using mainnet address/abi
const ChainlinkVRF = await new ethers.Contract(CHAINLINK_VRF_MAINNET, abi, ethersProvider);

// query events from a generic block range
const eventFilter = vrf.filters.RandomnessRequestFulfilled();
const events = await vrf.queryFilter(eventFilter, fromBlock, toBlock);
```

The random number generated is of type `BigNumber`, but we can parse it to fit our needs.

```javascript
// guarantee the same random numbers each time by doing rand % limitNumber
const modVal = ethers.BigNumber.from(TOTAL_TOKEN_HOLDERS.toString());

const _getRandomNumberFromEvent = (event) => {
  const b = ethers.utils.formatEther(event.args.output); // actually just a BigNumber
  const [massiveInteger] = b.split('.');
  return parseInt(ethers.BigNumber.from(massiveInteger).mod(modVal).toNumber());
}
```

Now it's just a matter of applying a simple algorithm to deterministically choose the winners. We use the word *deterministically* because this process should produce the same output every time, given the same input (the snapshot of winners).

```
for each number in `randomNumbers`:
 1. retrieve the owner at index in `tokenOwners`
  - if owner has listed the token for less than 3.3 ETH => retrieve the next owner (idx+1) until false
 2. flag owner as a weiner
 3. remove the account from the array of `tokenOwners` for the next draw not to include
```

## Storj | Decentralized storage of assets and metadata

The protocol of choice for hosting token metadata is [IPFS](https://ipfs.io/), although you would still need to use a pinning service like [Pinata](https://www.pinata.cloud/).

However, at Jupiter Group we use [Storj](https://www.storj.io/) to host and serve our content. It was a successful integration for the Boonji drop ([see case study](https://www.storj.io/documents/storj-case-study-boonji-

web3, NFTs, and music are beginning to converge

Although some ideas from the 2017 ICO craze faded into the background, some have taken main stage in 2021. **DAOs** are an innovative way to organize money and people, and **NFTs** went from headlines about record-breaking sales (a cheeky *$69 million*) to being the new backbone for hundreds if not thousands of web3 projects. Under the hood, NFTs are an `ERC721` smart contract - a program that codifies all the rules behind the digital asset. The most basic of NFTs simply allow you to transfer the token to another wallet; the more interesting ones are just around the corner.

### NFTs will radically change how we represent digital files, how we think about the monetary value associated with them, and the way in which we interact with them online.

If we take a look at the smart contract that represents a [bored ape](https://opensea.io/assets/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d/3003), we can actually see [what functionality](https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d#code) it supports. It’s a basic `ERC721` with some business logic to handle the initial sale/distribution. In some cases an upgradable smart contract is used, meaning more functionality can be added later - although this design pattern is more meant for potential bug fixes, not so much additive features. In any case, new contracts could be later deployed that interact with the original `ERC721` contract.

What more functionality would we want? Well, we could make it such that every future sale of the NFT would distribute royalty fees to the original creator (the person that minted the token) or all previous owners - automatically. No need to have them visit a webpage and claim their money. The transfer/sale of the token itself would trigger the routing of value from the buyer’s ETH wallet to the recipients’ ETH wallets. This kind of automatic value routing is only now possible on the internet via blockchain networks;  it feels like the internet finally has a native payments protocol.

Another feature that could be embedded in the NFT contract itself is this idea of streamable money. Imagine a company decides to sponsor one of the bored apes, considering the owner is a famous celebrity that represents their brand well. In order to use that specific bored ape in their next marketing campaign, they have to open a payment channel between their ETH wallet and the NFT owner’s. That payment channel would, on some contract-defined interval, stream a little bit of ETH to the owner’s wallet - and the act of creating this channel alone would grant the company exclusive access to use the bored app in their next commercial. There’s obviously a few different components of this feature that need to be developed and made scalable, but [SuperFluid](https://www.superfluid.finance/) already has a set of smart contracts available for developers to create products on top of streaming payment channels.

### Audio is about to have its moment in the NFT spotlight

Ideas around digital ownership apply to other kinds of files, not just JPEGs. I think music files are about to have their moment in the NFT spotlight. We can see the early signs of industry interest with 3lau and his music royalties platform [Royal](https://royal.io/), and Snoop Dogg [selling NFT Passes for a Metaverse party](https://decrypt.co/81720/snoop-dogg-1000-nft-passes-private-ethereum-metaverse-party). These are concrete examples of interest from an industry that is poised for innovation and a complete overhaul of business models.

A platform with an extensive plan to be the web3 platform for musicians is [Audius](https://audius.org/) - a protocol for audio content aiming to be its decentralized storage solution and ledger. The protocol consists of the Audius tokens ($AUDIO), stablecoins, and artist tokens. Staked $AUDIO tokens have an associated governance weight, allowing token holders to shape future iterations of the platform. The artist token revolves around the idea that when fan