What is ReachMe, which CZ launched this morning? Will it trigger a resurgence in crypto social networking?

Fun at night! In the early hours of this morning, Binance founder CZ changed the profile of his X account to: "DM me at https://reachme.io/@cz_binance (fees go to charity)" (DM me on ReachMe, the fees will go to charity).

Before today, most people had not heard of ReachMe and its related financing news or clues on social media. When I was confused, I followed the clues to check the website and X account of the project and found that ReachMe is a paid chat application paid with BNB. The specific features include:

It is a paid chat application that connects KOLs and fans. The payment price is divided into: low (minimum 0.01 BNB), medium (0.1 to 1 BNB), high (higher than 1 BNB). The application interface shows: Discover Key Opinion Leaders;

After connecting the wallet, users can choose the KOL they want to send a private message to, and choose to pay a certain amount of BNB to send a message based on their chat price. If the KOL does not respond within 5 days, the user will automatically receive a 50% refund;

The maximum length of the message that can be entered is 2000 characters;

Only text is allowed, no attachments or images are allowed (to prevent Trojan viruses).

Of course, users can also connect to X and complete the KOL verification information, set (as shown below): their own user name, the price to be paid for sending messages, KOL category and personal description, and wait for others to come to tease (pay money).

Pay to Reach, originated from an article published by CZ on Binance Square

Tracing back to its origin, ReachMe originated from an article titled "Pay to Reach" published by CZ on Binance Square on March 8. The key points of the article are as follows:

1. A chat application that selects the most useful information and optimizes the communication coverage

The emergence of time tokenization inspired CZ's idea of "allowing fans and KOLs to truly connect effectively". Although many platforms such as X and LinkedIn provide the function of private messaging with others, these platforms have too wide a coverage, and it is difficult for the platform to filter out truly useful private messages. The flood of information will lead to problems such as spam flying all over the sky and insufficient attention of KOLs. What CZ wants to do is not time tokenization, but to optimize the coverage of communication, so that people who really need to communicate can get in touch with KOLs.

2. BNB is used as payment and incentive, non-mandatory platform chat - after getting the opportunity to communicate, you can also move to other free platforms

As mentioned above, anyone can pay a certain amount on the platform to send a message to the KOL. If the KOL does not reply within 5 days, 50% of the payment amount will be refunded to the message sender. This mechanism can prevent spam and encourage fans to write truly useful content.

For KOLs, 50% of the BNB payment amount will motivate them to reply to fans' content.

For fans, paid chat is different from daily communication after all (BNB needs to be paid for each message). You can also choose to attach your contact information in the message you send. If the KOL is willing, he can also move to other free messaging apps to continue talking to you based on the contact information you provide. (In this way, you can pay 50% less and get a real communication opportunity, everything is based on the KOL's wishes.)

The platform charges a 10% fee for all transactions, and the remaining 90% platform will send it to the wallet address provided by the KOL.

3. No coin issuance expected under sufficient demand; potential Yzi Labs investment?

CZ clearly stated in the article that the application does not need tokens, and hopes that the platform will have enough demand to support its sustainable development. He will donate the BNB he receives to charity. For users who can provide truly useful content, CZ may remove the conversation from the platform, refund their payment amount, or even provide a bounty (such as some tips related to encryption security), and the price of paid chats will also be adjusted according to the unpopularity.

In addition, CZ also stated that YZiLabs may invest in a high-quality project developed using BNB/BSC as the main means of payment. (Or imply that ReachMe will receive investment from Yzi Labs.)

Extra: ReachMe internal staff may also participate in the construction of another new project

Back to ReachMe, its X account was created in March this year, and not much information was released, all of which were warnings to users that ReachMe did not have an official token.

Interestingly, in addition to CZ, ReachMe also followed three other people: Sanya, Mihaita.eth and Rand. The three also hold positions in another project called droppod. Sanya, the founder of droppod, is also an employee of venture capital Paper Ventures. According to RootData data, Paper Ventures has invested in crypto projects such as DoubleZero, Pell Network, Renzo Protocol, Sophon, and Holonym.

Droppod is also a platform for tokenized distribution without permission and social verification. The project is committed to optimizing the token distribution (airdrop, presale, etc.) mode of project parties, improving the interaction between project tokens and platforms, and making token distribution a real part of the project ecosystem. Combined with the fact that its founder works at Paper Ventures and the staking projects invested by the venture capital, I personally speculate that droppod will provide a new mechanism (most likely staking) to prevent users who get tokens through presales and airdrops from selling them immediately and causing the tokens to plummet.

Conclusion

As of the time of posting, ReachMe has already had many users, CZ's paid chat price is 0.1 BNB, and two groups of conversations have been completed (not visible to the outside world).

It has been 3 weeks since ReachMe came out and CZ stood on the platform. My humble opinion: As a crypto application, ReachMe should perhaps include the charts of the total transaction volume, revenue, and daily user communication times of the platform in its application interface, or it can also raise the threshold for KOL verification. Everyone can send messages to KOLs, but not everyone can pass the verification and receive messages as a KOL. In addition, it is necessary to prevent the entry of fake accounts. (Of course, the platform built in just three weeks is already good, and the new version may be coming soon.)

Finally, I would like to quote a sentence from a KOL: "Renaissance? Wasn't this kind of paid Q&A platform a small outlet of the Internet eight years ago? There are also a lot of similar entrepreneurial platforms that basically disappeared in the end."

If ReachMe wants to avoid disappearing, it can only achieve Mass Adoption first. As CZ's article predicts, it must continue to make optimizations based on user needs under its sustainable development. In the future, it may be possible to integrate X and LinkedIn as a new communication function. I look forward to ReachMe making a more perfect optimized version, and I also look forward to ReachMe having good transactions and sustainability under the BNB Chain craze. From the perspective of small users: Not issuing coins for the time being does not mean that there will not be a new token economic model after the smooth development of the project in the future.