Time is Wealth: A Quick Read on the Time Tokenization Application time.fun on Base

Author: Karen, Foresight News

This week, another SocialFi application on Base, time.fun, has emerged, attracting the attention of industry builders and KOLs such as @tier10k, wallstreetbets, Helius CEO @0xMert_, icebergy, and The Block CEO Larry Cermak since its launch.

So, how does this application, which tokenizes time in minutes, work? Is there a plan to release a token? What are its future development prospects? This article will introduce and discuss these questions.

What is time.fun?

time.fun was initially launched as circle.tech and gained favor from the Crypto accelerator Alliance in April this year. The goal of circle.tech from the beginning was to allow users to tokenize time, enabling creators to earn income while fans could interact with creators through paid means, such as consultations, group chats, or watching live streams.

At the end of last month, circle.tech rebranded itself as time.fun, partly to eliminate liability risks associated with its similar name to Circle (the issuer of USDC), and partly to align more closely with its concept of "time tokenization." It sets the value of time according to a joint curve, providing creators with time delivery revenue while also offering a small portion of transaction fees to incentivize creators and empower time holders to some extent.

Builder @0xKawz stated that time.fun not only allows for the tokenization of time but also supports deeper connections between creators and loyal fans, such as scheduling meetings and private messaging.

How does time.fun operate?

On time.fun, users can create accounts using Google, Discord, Apple, or Twitter, but ultimately need to connect and verify their Twitter accounts. This means that time.fun ensures the platform's traffic comes from an active social media ecosystem.

Then, Web3Auth automatically generates a wallet for users. If interaction is needed, users must recharge on Base to pay for gas or the costs of purchasing and redeeming time.

The value of time on time.fun is dynamically adjusted based on market demand, using a joint curve pricing mechanism. After purchasing time, fans can redeem or deliver (redeem) time to schedule meetings with creators, with a minimum redeemable time of 15 minutes. Additionally, fans can privately message creators, with each message costing 1 minute, and creators are required to respond within 5 days.

To further enrich the interaction between creators and fans, time.fun also offers a group feature supported by a Telegram bot. Creators can authorize the bot to manage group members, enabling automated member invitations and removals.

Regarding the original circle.tech fee model, 1% of the referral fee is allocated to users who refer creators, circle.tech charges a 5% consultation application fee, and the remaining 94% is distributed to creators who receive consultations or chats.

After the rebranding, time.fun updated its fee model to focus more on the time delivery of creators and the empowerment of time holders. It also drives time value speculation by allocating a small portion of time transaction fees to creators, thereby enhancing platform activity.

Creators can earn ETH in three ways: when fans trade their time, when fans redeem time (i.e., for chats, meetings, etc.), and through referrals. Among these, trading earns up to 2.1%, referral users earn 0.5%, while the revenue from redeeming time accounts for a staggering 95%, incentivizing creators to create more value for their fans.

Additionally, a portion of the transaction and redemption fees is allocated to the time holder (timeholder) fund. According to time.fun, time holders can also benefit from the time holder fund, which can receive up to 2% of the transaction and redemption volume. Creators can choose suitable ways to use this fund, such as gifting it to fans.

Will time.fun issue a token?

The original documentation of circle.tech indicated that the circle.tech application could earn points, which would be considered for future airdrops and giveaways. Creating an account, asking questions, answering questions, and participating in one-on-one chats would all earn reward points.

Builder @0xKawz stated in Discord, "A snapshot has been taken for the circle.tech points activity. However, now is not a good time for an airdrop. Circle.tech has performed poorly in terms of fees and attracting truly stable users. We hope to bring more usage through time.fun and still plan to conduct an airdrop this summer, distributing a fixed proportion of tokens to users (both old and new product users)."

In the planning of time.fun, the time.fun contract will be scalable, with more products using minutes as the base currency to be launched soon. Other projects can build on time.fun after being added to the whitelist. Additionally, TIME airdrops can also be earned in Q1.

What are the prospects for time.fun?

In fact, the concept of time tokenization is not new. In 2022, Aave's experimental department Newt delivered the first time tokenization project Aika, which allowed time to be minted and sold as NFTs on Polygon. At that time, Newt viewed Aika as a standardized method for guilds, service DAOs, and other crypto-native organizations to pay for services. However, Aika only allowed creators to earn rewards after delivering time, making it difficult to attract creators. The project eventually fizzled out.

Recently, orb.land, which was praised by Vitalik Buterin as "cool," restricted a creator to issuing only one Orb NFT and introduced a Harberger tax system to constrain the holding and resale of commitment NFTs, encouraging high-quality interactions between creators and holders, as well as promoting efficient resource allocation. The idea is good, but there is low demand for it among creators and ordinary players, as no transactions mean no earnings for creators.

In contrast, time.fun has a better incentive mechanism, allowing creators to not only share in the time redemption but also earn a small portion from secondary time speculation trading, thus driving them to expand their influence, attract more fans, and enhance platform activity. At the same time, ordinary users or fans can also benefit from the time holder fund.

Whether time.fun can kickstart the creator fee flywheel remains to be seen. After all, at this stage, users are more focused on speculation rather than real value, and the time value of creators currently seems to be just users guessing the popularity of the creators.