What is the attention economy?

Your attention has value.

You can pay it to whatever you like, whether it be attention to a news article, a movie or a social media post. Currently we are giving our attention away for free. When we scroll through instagram, facebook and twitter, our attention drives profits for those platforms.

Information is abundant, attention is scarce. We can get information on almost anything in a matter of seconds with the click of a button, but where our attention goes is a commodity on its own. Various platforms and apps fight for the attention of their users - the more time spent on them the better, because these platforms are monetized through advertising. Nearly all media is dependent on the attention economy. These platforms only have value when users provide attention. The trade-off is that ideally, we’re receiving value worthy of our attention…

Something feels wrong about the attention economy…

Online spending has increased substantially, and the current attention economy leads to incentives that sacrifice the user experience. Using attention-driven and attention grabbing apps today, you may see posts from people you don’t know, content you never subscribed for, or pop up ads for things you just bought (creepy!).

Suddenly, you don’t recognize or care about half the posts on your facebook feed. Everyone on instagram is peddling some scam trying to get your credit card details, rather than actually useful health advice. Check out the “I am the product” blog post. The problem isn’t just that users should be compensated for the value they create through their content and attention, but the incentive structure as a whole needs to change.

“Ads and data tracking make using web products feel bad”

How have people tried to solve this problem?

Some people use ad-blockers, which lead to a gap in content, severing the value flowing to the social media company but not changing the incentives of the system as a whole. You also end up hurting the smaller creators rather than the big names, people who rely on dedicated communities. Other startups have suggested compensating users for their advertising data, which is fairer but doesn’t deal with the fact that ads and data tracking make using web products feel bad.

Imagine if rewarding creators was built-in to the code of every web application.

Koii envisions a web where developers can build apps without worrying about optimizing ad revenue or where to put a pay-wall. By deploying apps to a network of interconnected computers called “Nodes”, and storing data permanently on Arweave, Koii eliminates the gas and subscription fees that make running an application so expensive thus creating a better browsing experience.

NFTs have become so popular even the international olympics committee is dabbling, with Tokyo already making an agreement with Nway (a subsidiary of Animoca Brands) but how can we get even more out of the content we create and collect? Koii has built the attention economy into the infrastructure of the network, meaning every app built on our framework will track attention and earn KOII daily. This framework will be cross-chain compatible.

Check out our proof-of-concept dApp by minting an NFT on koi.rocks, and start earning attention rewards for the views your content gets. And because Koii is leveraged by Arweave you never have to worry about your content being taken down, it is in the permaweb for good.

Pre-register today to run a node, and earn KOII for powering the network. No need for terabyte SSD’s or powerful computers to run a Koii Node, just 1gb of RAM and a morsel of hard drive space.

Better media makes a better world; decentralization lets you own it.

To start earning attention rewards on your NFTs, register them at koi.rocks or check out our tutorial to learn how.

Continue the conversation and join Koii’s official community Telegram channel, Koii’s Discord, and follow us on Twitter.