A customizable and privacy-focused, decentralized social news platform.
Ticker:
SPN
Token type:
ERC20
ICO Token Price:
1 SPN = 0.11 USD
Fundraising Goal:
30,000,000 USD
Sold on pre-sale:
18,500,000 USD
(20% BONUS)
Total Tokens:
500,000,000
Available for Token Sale:
45%
Table of Contents
What is Sapien?
Sapien seeks to be a social news platform that allows users to customize their experience and reward those who create or provide content, forgoing any intermediaries. The core values of the platform are identified as democracy, privacy, free speech, and customizability.
The ultimate goal of the platform will be to create a community of readers and contributors that have real say in the direction and development of the platform, while also providing a quantifiable measurement the value of contributions made by users. The contributions will be incentivized according to quality, which should eliminate trolls and attract those who have something meaningful or worthwhile to share.
The roadmap tracking milestones and the development of the ICO’s vision shows that it has been in development for some time. The idea was initially conceived in 2024 and a private beta was launched in Q1 of 2024. The token sale is scheduled to occur soon, and infrastructure will be built later this year. They aim to roll out a decentralized marketplace in Q2 of 2024 and add 10 million new users per month by the end of 2024.
How Does Sapien Work?
The first step to making sure Sapien works is to create a consensus standard for what constitutes valuable, high quality content. There will be mechanisms implemented that will reward those who contribute quality content and reduce the amount of trolling or spreading of low quality news or content. All contributions made will be evaluated through the network and will generate a reputation score.
The platform will also be completely democratized by giving the token holders significant influence over the platform’s direction. Additionally, users will be given a voice through a proposal system, so they can have say regarding the development and features of the platform. Ideally this will create an enthused and active community that works together to create the highest quality platform they can.
From there a marketplace will be built that will reward user contributions through payouts for providing content that is deemed valuable. This can create an environment that is free from the influence of ad revenue. Additionally, SPN holder will be able to purchase goods, both physical and virtual, through the marketplace.
The final step will be to build a developer platform that is powered by SPN and allows users to integrate apps and external apps to utilize the user base. Sapien API will be launched to allow users to make exchanges and transactions using one currency.
Features and Benefits of Sapien
Some of the features promoted by the ICO include the ability to switch between public and private mode, so you can be anonymous or use your real identity. You’ll also be able to create groups, add friends, and share posts in order to foster the sense of community and establish relationships.
Subscriptions will be offered for specific branches of the platform for topics or friends that you want to stay up to date with. The experience as a whole will be extremely customizable in that individuals will be able to control every feature and adjust it to their liking.
Furthermore, the encryption provided by the platform will ensure that your privacy will be protected – specifically your personal data and chat conversations.
The Sapien Token Sale
The token presale just wrapped up on February 15th, and the main token sale is scheduled to being on March 20th, 2024 and run through April 3rd. It appears that investors from all countries are able to participate. The tokens are referred to as SPN and are distributed in ERC20 form. In total there will be 500,000,000 tokens created and 45% of them will be put up as part of the sale.
Sapien sets its fundraising goal at $30 million, and with the recently completed presale they have already raised $18.5 million. The sale will accept ETH and BTC, and there is no minimum or maximum contribution indicated. On the first day there will be a 15% bonus offered, and it will decline to 10% for the rest of the first week. One SPN is equivalent to $0.11.
Graphs for both the intended allocation of funds and distribution of tokens are provided. As mentioned, 45% of the tokens are being made available in the sale, 30% will go into a platform reserve, the team receives 20%, and 5% go to bounties. Meanwhile, 55% of the funds generated will go to development, 15% for administrative fees, 15% for marketing, 10% for security audits, and the final 5% for legal.
Who’s Behind Sapien?
The ICO website identifies six key positions on their team, beginning with Ankit Bhatia, the CEO and co-founder. According to his bio he studied Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at UC Berkeley, where he designed and developed the Sapien platform as a Junior. The other co-founder is Robert Giometti who also serves as the company’s CPO. Robert was also a student at UC Berkeley where he studied Mathematics along with Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is responsible for developing many of the features in Sapien.
The CTO is Aurelien Nicolas who has worked in the same position for Deckard A.I., as well as a data architect for Lovoo GmbH. Marketing strategy is handled by Matias Dorta who studied Political Science and Marketing at American University. He also founded an independent marketing firm called 41collective. In total six positions are identified with mini-bios provided for each employee.
The advisory board is made up of six individuals each with a special area of expertise such as marketing strategy or investor relations. Board members include the recent CEO of eBay India, a PhD, lawyer, and early adopters of crypto currency.
Conclusion
Overall, Sapien is an intriguing idea that can address one of the most consistent issues plaguing internet discourse: trolling. Trolling can be impossible to avoid and can disrupt social media platforms and communities constantly, leaving members of those communities frustrated with no real recourse. By incentivizing and promoting quality contributions using the SPN tokens, standard online discourse could be changed significantly while actually giving users more power, not less.
There are still some questions to be answered regarding Sapien, primarily what mechanisms are going to determine what contributions are quality and which ones are not. Obviously, users will have a big part in determining this, but it would seem that the process of determining what meets the standard of quality could itself be trolled and disrupted if the trolls were so inclined. Beyond that, we would like more details regarding the plans to launch the Sapien API marketplace and what sorts of goods and services will be available to purchase with the tokens.
The ICO has had good returns so far through the presale and they should meet their fundraising goal easily. Their site is also full of easy to process information as well as a beta platform for prospective users to try.