Elon Musk, Twitter’s CTO, recently changed Twitter’s name to “X” as part of his strategy to turn the social media site into a payment application.But another cryptocurrency business might succeed before him.Users will soon be able to transmit digital money and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) straight to one another through Web3 wallet Suku, a cryptocurrency payments tool that enables transactions over social media sites. The service is launching with Twitter.
In honor of the release of Polygon 2.0 last week, Suku collaborated with sidechain Polygon to hold an open-edition NFT mint.Users were able to mint more than 50,000 NFTs during the 48-hour mint period by simply tweeting about Suku and Polygon.Users were prompted to access the NFT after posting by either downloading the Suku Wallet Chrome extension or going to the wallet’s website and logging in with their Twitter account.More than 48,000 users opened Suku accounts during the mint time.Suku’s CEO, Yonathan Lapchik, told CoinDesk that the company’s goal is to simplify the onboarding process for new cryptocurrency users, and that doesn’t always mean “connecting a wallet” first.
“We start with the assumption that we are going to be concentrating a lot of our efforts to bring in non-crypto users,” said Lapchik. “The majority of people will not have a wallet…for us, the first phase is really to give someone a wallet immediately.”
Any petrol costs customers would typically pay when sending or receiving payments are covered as part of Suku’s strategy to promote adoption.Suku aims to expand to other social media networks after their initial foray into cryptocurrency payments with Twitter.While Twitter aspires to develop into a payments app, Lapchik claimed it’s challenging to establish a decentralized payments system with a single centralized application; as a result, Suku must spread to other platforms in order for users to retain a comprehensive social network.
“If you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and LinkedIn all day, you don’t want to have a payment system for each one of those – you only want to have one that connects to all of the social media platforms,” said Lapchik. “That’s exactly what we do, and when you top that off with being noncustodial and easy to use and easy to onboard, I think that’s a great formula.”
Several businesses are now bringing their products to social networks, despite the fact that cryptocurrency payment applications have long been outside of social media programs (and there once was a company called ChangeTip, a tool for giving bitcoin tips via social media that shut down in 2016).Earlier in July, messaging service Telegram announced that it will now enable users to send cryptocurrency between chats.