“gm” (or “good morning” as non-crypto people say) is the welcoming, friendly, and optimistic term that crypto and NFT enthusiasts use to greet their respective communities each day. From Twitter to Discord to Reddit and now to the aptly named gm.xyz, it is rare to scroll through these social media platforms without seeing a “gm” thrown around.
You’ve probably heard of the first three companies listed above, but what is gm.xyz? While it is certainly a place to say “gm” to your fellow anonymous internet buddies each morning, it’s also a lot more than that.
Per their Twitter bio, gm.xyz is “building a crypto-native, decentralized, and user-owned social network”. I view it as a web3 version of Reddit that is built on crypto rails. Similar to Reddit, users can build and manage communities that revolve around a specific cryptocurrency, NFT, DAO, or really any other topic. In fact, Nic Carter’s podcast “On The Brink with Castle Island” just decided to launch a community on gm.xyz as a place where listeners and fans can discuss the latest episodes and interact directly with the Castle Island team. One of the most active communities is the Web3 Music community which facilitates conversation regarding the intersection of music and web3.
Building on crypto rails allows for some really cool features on gm.xyz. First, there’s no need for a username or password. You simply “log-in with Ethereum” by connecting your crypto wallet (e.g. Metamask). Connecting a wallet automatically gives every user a bank account they can receive payments to and allows gm to use web3 primitives (e.g. NFTs, tokens, etc.) in all sorts of interesting ways. For example, if I own a Bored Ape NFT, they might suggest other BAYC owners for me to follow. It also allows communities to grant certain privileges and access to their token holders (e.g. in c/BanklessDAO, people who own, say, 10,000 $BANK tokens might have access to certain private channels within the community). And lastly, wallets can be used to combat spam and make the platform safer through asset requirements for certain writing/messaging permissions.
So, how will gm.xyz be able to steal market share from the incumbents? Currently, there are a few key problems users face that gm.xyz is hoping to address, per their “about” page:
- The tools currently used to create and manage crypto-asset communities and DAOs are complex and suboptimal. Discord — the de facto standard — is a chat app built for social gaming. Anyone who has joined a popular server and tried to sift through thousands of unordered messages knows there’s much room for improvement. Today, communities have to stitch together a hodge-podge of products to accomplish their goals around token issuance, access gating, multisig management, community rewards, on-chain governance, and more. We believe this will have to be much easier if crypto-asset communities are going to be as big as we think they are.
- Traditional Web2 social networks (e.g. Reddit, Facebook, etc.) have take rates of 100% (see Chris Dixon Thread: “Your Take Rate is My Opportunity”). This should be closer to 1% or 2%. We believe community and content creators should capture almost all of the value for their contributions.
- Today’s social media oligarchs have too much power and misaligned incentives. We believe a social network should be decentralized (nobody can control it) and permissionless (anyone can use it).
Discord is currently the best place for crypto and NFT communities to gather on the internet, but gm.xyz has major plans to shake this up. In its current form, gm.xyz makes for an asynchronous compliment to Discord. If you’ve ever been in an active Discord community (let alone 15+), you know it becomes very difficult to stay up-to-date on the latest news because the content is chronological, moves fast, and is often disorganized. gm.xyz relies on upvotes and downvotes, similar to Reddit, so that the best posts are easy to find. In the video below, Mike, the co-founder of gm.xyz, speaks to why this new platform is a better place for web3 communities than Discord. The TLDR:
Communication is asynchronous & content is organized
Community member contribution is measured (via Rep points, like Karma on Reddit)
There are better moderation tools and less spam
I’d be remiss not mention gm’s long-term plan to “progressively decentralize” their technology stack over time. Their setup is more akin to a web2 company’s stack at the moment, because gm.xyz firmly believes that this is the best way to start building a social platform that people actually want to use. Over time, they will progressively decentralize by open-sourcing their code base, opening up their APIs, and moving to decentralized architecture. They first need to achieve product-market fit, form a robust userbase, and create a model that incentivizes sustainable operations. Their idea for progressive decentralization is inspired by a playbook from Jesse Walden and Andreessen Horowitz.
They’re also building in public and constantly requesting community feedback. If you have a community you’d like to launch, or specific tooling that would help enhance your community/DAO, definitely reach out directly to Mike and the gm.xyz team. They are quick to respond and are world class shipooors.
If you’re wondering “wen airdrop?”, the team has stated they have zero near-term plans for a token airdrop. They don’t want new users who are solely airdrop farming. They launched quietly in September 2021 and have done little-to-no marketing to date with the goal of creating a genuine, loyal community. But they’ve already amassed a userbase of ~12,000, so what are you waiting for?
If you’d like to learn more, here’s a recent interview from Logan Jastremski’s podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOcygCDhdBk